Osama, directed by Siddiq Barmak, is the first film shot entirely in Afghanistan since the rise and fall of the Taliban, and it’s a heartbreaking look back at life under that regime. It’s about a 12-year-old girl, played by a marvelous nonactor, Marina Golbahari, who is disguised as a boy by her mother, a widowed nurse, so she can work to support the family. (The Taliban has ordered all women indoors.) For a while, she pulls off the ruse, working in the grocery store of a family friend. But when she is herded into the local Taliban school, her terror becomes palpable. A cocky local street kid knows her secret—it’s he who calls her Osama—and, between taunts, defends her; but it is only a matter of time before she is found out. Osama could be a stand-in for an entire generation of suffering Afghan women, and yet she is fiercely individual.