Parvana is an 11-year-old girl who lives under Taliban rule in Afghanistan in 2001. After the wrongful arrest of her father, Parvana cuts off her hair and dresses like a boy to support her family. Working alongside a friend, she soon discovers a new world of freedom and danger. Drawing strength from the fantastical stories she invents, Parvana embarks on an epic quest to find her father and reunite her family.
The animation is expressive, as lush and detailed as tapestry. Harsh landscapes shimmer with beauty, even when littered with the bones of landmines and abandoned tanks.
Parvana copes by telling fables of wild animals and quests-these sections are dense and vivid, paper cutouts on layered backgrounds, providing cathartic levity in a very serious movie.
The Breadwinner is a well-crafted and inspiring story with an important message about female empowerment, embodied in heroic Parvana, something people of all ages should embrace.
The biggest criticism of The Breadwinner for me is not one of the film itself, which is undoubtedly a triumph of storytelling, but simply that I'm not sure exactly who it intends to tell the story to.
A dance between exhilarating escapades and unthinkable brutality, which though largely confined to offscreen spaces nonetheless lurks over the movie like a dark cloud.
Children must grow up fast under such circumstances, and The Breadwinner derives its lasting sense of tragedy from its consideration of how they've been stripped of their childhood. There's a sad undercurrent to Parvana's fairy tale.
