Osama is the first feature film made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban -- about a young girl who dresses as a boy to survive -- rings devastatingly true. There's something both maddening and exhilarating about watching movies that come from nations without thriving film industries: It's maddening because we often feel we should approach these pictures with reverence and awe, lest we be branded as closed-minded Westerners who don't have the patience to sit through interminable and repeated shots of, say, pots of milk being stirred by wrinkled old men. At the same time, it's exhilarating to feel a connection to a culture you don't know, and to recognize that the people who really want to make movies will find a way to do it. Afghan director Siddiq Barmak's "Osama," set in the era of Taliban rule, tells the story of an Afghan girl who, at the risk of being discovered and killed, masquerades as a boy in order to earn money for her family -- a necessity since her father and uncle have both been killed and it's forbidden for women, even widows, to work. It's impossible not to respond to the girl's plight (she's the Osama of the title) or to that of the women around her: A peaceful demonstration of burqa-clad widows, arguing reasonably and meekly for their right to support their children, is squelched, violently, by Taliban thugs. Men and even young boys strut through the streets like dusty roosters -- their sex has automatically made them kings -- while women aren't even allowed out of the house unless escorted by a male relative. Even if we accept, as we need to, that fictional films (even those inspired by a true story, as this one was) by their very nature trade on dramatization and exaggeration, everything in "Osama" rings true, jibes with what we've seen or read about the Taliban in the news. Salon.com