In Shahrbanoo Sadat’s energetic and captivating drama, a movie-mad boy is forced to live in a Soviet-run orphanage during the 1981 occupation
In 2016, the young Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat won a prize at the Directors’ fortnight in Cannes for her quasi-autobiographical debut Wolf and Sheep, about shepherd children in the mountains of central
Afghanistan. Now Sadat, who is 29, has directed a sequel, following the life of one of these children: Quodrat, now a teenager and still played by the same non-professional, Quodratollah Qadiri.
He is shown living in
Kabul during the
Russian occupation in 1981. Both his parents are dead. Movie-mad and obsessed with Bollywood pictures, Quodrat is arrested for selling cinema tickets on the black market, and he is made to live in a Soviet-run orphanage, where the lessons are in Russian. There is bullying and intrigue, but also opportunities for adventure.