Film
Direction: Shahrbanoo Sadat
Screenplay: Shahrbanoo Sadat
Camera: Virginie Sudej
Editor: Alexandra Strauss
Sound: Sigrid DPA Jensen & Anne Gry Friis Kristensen
Producer: Katja Adomeit
Production: Adomeit Film
Co-producers: Adomeit Germany, La Fabrica Nocturna, Samsa Film, Wolf Pictures World sales: Luxbox
With: Qodratollah Qadiri, Sediqa Rasuli, Masihullah Feraji, Hasibullah Rasooli, Ahmad Fayaz Omani
Denmark, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Afghanistan, Qatar
2019, 90 min.
DCP, BluRay, Colour
Dari, Russian, Hindi, Urdu with english subtitles
External content: (Youtube, Vimeo, Google Maps, SoundCloud, Shopify)
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The Orphanage
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In the late 1980s, 15-year-old Qodrat lives in the streets of Kabul and sells cinema tickets on the black market. He is a big Bollywood fan and he daydreams himself into some of his favorite movie scenes. One day the Police bring him to the Soviet orphanage. But in Kabul the political situation is changing. Qodrat and all the children want to defend their home.
„The Orphanage is a terrific child’s-eye movie, bustling with freshness and old-fashioned storytelling gusto. I loved the fantasy Bollywood sequences, but also the purely realist incidents, including an amazing scene where Quodrat and the boys come across a burnt-out Soviet tank in the mountains and loot it for bullets and military gear. There is also a funny and absorbing interlude when selected children are allowed on a trip to Moscow; they play chess with state-of-the-art USSR computers and even visit Lenin’s tomb: the culture-shock impact is nicely managed. When they return to Kabul, however, things are disturbingly different and there is a rumour that the Soviets are on the way out. There is such energy and vigour and openness in this movie. If Sadat continues with Quodrat’s life story, there could be something like Truffaut going on here, blended with the poetic gentleness of Kiarostami. Sadat is a film-maker to watch.“
