The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner (2007) begins with two boys in Kabul. Amir is the son of a wealthy family, Hasan the son of a Hazara family who work in the house. On the day of a kite tournament Amir witnesses something and does not intervene. The rest of the film is the cost of that silence. The source is Khaled Hosseini's novel. Marc Forster directed. It could not be shot in Afghanistan. Because of the conflict it was filmed in Kashgar in China, roughly 500 miles from Kabul. The real issue was the safety of the child actors. The release was pushed back six weeks, from November to 14 December 2007. Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada said plainly what worried him: he wanted to keep acting, but the thought of his friends watching the rape scene upset him. Paramount relocated four of the children to the United Arab Emirates and covered their living costs until they reached adulthood, at an estimated cost of up to 500,000 dollars. The Afghan government banned the film in cinemas and on DVD, with the deputy information minister saying it showed the country's ethnic groups in a bad light. What followed was hard. Mahmoodzada fled to Sweden by 2017 after threats and harassment from both Hazara and Pashtun communities. Ebrahimi returned to Kabul after four months and had to be schooled at home for his safety. It cost 20 million dollars, grossed 73.2 million worldwide, and was nominated for an Academy Award for its score. It runs 128 minutes. Good for: stories of migration and guilt, adaptations of novels, and Afghan history. Less good for: the book's interior voice is lost and the characters flatten. The rescue in the second half rests on too much coincidence. The rape and what follows are heavy.