Female Film Critics 24/375
Filmed with an intimate realism that feels as authentic as any documentary, Shahrbanoo Sadat’s The Orphanage is a compelling drama about life in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, near the end of the country’s Soviet era. Like Sadat’s first feature, Wolf and Sheep, it’s based on the unpublished diaries of Anwar Hashimi, and it offers a closely observed portrait of real teen life in this specific time and place.
Read more
Set in Afghanistan in 1989, The Orphanage centers on a thoroughly engaging Kabul street boy, a teenager named Qodrat (Qodratollah Qadiri), who’s on his own, in survival mode, eking out a living by selling trinkets and committing petty crimes. His form of relief — and it’s his passion — is going to the movies, particularly Bollywood flicks. His life changes dramatically when he’s picked up for scalping cinema tickets and is sent to a Soviet-run juvenile detention center — known as the orphanage.
Read more
Boys will be boys, no matter what their nationality or beliefs. That thought resounded in my head throughout The Orphanage, a coming-of–age tale that is the second cinematic chapter of a planned five-part series directed by Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat. The time is 1989 and the place is Kabul. That’s where we first meet 15-year-old movie fan and street kid Qodrat (Qodratollah Qadri) who earns his keep by selling key chains and scalping movie tickets.
Read more