A scene from Siddiq Barmak’s Afghani feature “Osama.” Image courtesy of the filmmakers.

He just won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film, but Afghan director Siddiq Barmak had to pay his dues in spades in order to get there. He was a wanted man: Only 10 days after the Taliban seized control of his country in 1996, he fled Kabul through the Shamali plain to northern Afghanistan, continuing more than two years later to Pakistan. Returning in 2001 after the Taliban’s collapse by an American-led invasion, he began preproduction on a film inspired by a letter from an old teacher that he had read in exile. Under the Taliban, a young girl eager to study had disguised herself as a boy in order to go to school.Pakistan which, he notes, still supports members of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They were very much afraid of motion pictures. To justify themselves, they used the religious concept that images were not allowed by God or the Messenger of God.” Barmak is also an ethnic Tajik, whose first language is Dari; the Taliban were primarily Pashto who spoke Pashto.

Barmak, who had wanted to be a projectionist when he was a boy, made this first feature with a cast of nonprofessionals. Most he found in a refugee camp and a home for street children, but he discovered his protagonist, 12-year-old Marina Golbahari, on the street when she approached him for spare change. “Osama” does not look like it was filmed in a country decimated by war: It is