What I Watched -- Osama

Osama is the story of oppressed women, and it's a sad one.  The title character is a young girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.  Her father and uncle were killed in various wars; she lives with her widowed mother and grandmother.  The women have no way to support themselves and are on the verge of starvation when they get the idea to disguise the girl as a young boy and send her to work for the family.

What follows is her struggle to fit into a caste in society that isn't hers, to somehow overcome all the rules limiting her gender which she had already learned so well.  And she is so obviously the unwilling hero of this story that you can't help but root for her.

This movie is a tragic reminder, a la A Thousand Splendid Suns, that life for women everywhere isn't what we're used to here.

Bottom line: a sad commentary on both poverty and gender.