the breadwinner…

Moira and I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see Nora Twomey’s animated film “The Breadwinner”. It’s based on Deborah Ellis’s novel about an 11 year-old girl in Afghanistan at a time when the country was ruled by the Taliban. The girl’s father is wrongfully imprisoned and she realises she needs to disguise herself as a boy in order to become the family’s sole breadwinner.
It’s a film about creativity and courage in the face of adversity, the strength of the family… and the power of storytelling.
I thought it was a stunning and powerful film (Moira wasn’t quite as taken by it, but we’re allowed to slightly disagree on this matters!) and absolutely beautifully animated (by the team behind ‘The Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea’ films)(Moira agrees!). It’s also a pretty frightening and depressing film about how people are treated (along the familiar lines of “what have we become?”) and yet, despite this backdrop, it retains a sense of humour and is tremendously uplifting and hopeful too.
Apparently, when researching her novel in the late 1990s, Ellis spent time interviewing girls and women in refugee camps in Pakistan and one gets a very real sense that the film has retained its cultural authenticity. Just(!) because it’s ‘animation’, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a film for children (it’s classified “12A”). Animation needs to be seen simply as a medium in this respect… the book was written for young adults AND adults and the film keeps to this.  
It’s a wonderful, inspiring film… and I think you need to see it.