An Afghan Love Story

Wow. Serious material - it's hard for an American woman to even conceive of this type of treatment. Makes me want to smack a Feminista when they come up with stuff about women not advancing to the boardroom or to partnership in the firm fast enough (actually it's because we go out on more leave than men - tally up three months after each baby - and it should be six months at least in my opinion - as well as having to stay home with sick children and other family members to care for them.) But the thought that it's still acceptable for a father to take his daughter's life to win back his "honor," is really medieval or even older. Even the old prosecuter said - if you caught it because it was quick - "this is wrong in our outdated culture." I'm glad they recognize it but I realize that old customs always linger longest. Like female genital mutilation in African countries (they don't do it in all Arabic countries like Iran and Iraq) it's something that won't go away and it's always because the grannys of the tribes fear that if they don't cut it out, then the female will be running around humping all objects, animate and inanimate... So sorry for these suffering girls. I'm generally conservative on immigration but I think all the women should be let into the USA immediately! Instead unfortunately we get the men, who tend to like their position in society (and why not?!!) and want to enact Sharia laws here and in other countries they go to. Oh and SPOILER ALERT!!!! - Her boyfriend Mustafa deserves a kick in his ass. I hope that her father waits for him one night after he gets out of his job and makes sure he's alone, then administers a heavy duty beating just for being an evil prick. He knew she was a virgin, and he knew there was no other man. Just a bastard - when you consider that he literally could have held her life in his hands. Thank God her parents were a little less medieval and sent her to India for abortion. I'm normally against that too except in rare cases kind of like this. The whole thing could give anyone the chills and we Americans must be more vigilant to make sure we maintain the freedoms we have taken for granted so long. They can be snatched away very quickly by a left-enough government.

Note: when I saw this film I knew little about it, and I think that added to it's power. So while this review doesn't contain spoilers in the normal sense -- everything revealed here is in the film's first half, and I've kept my comments deliberately vague -- I'd urge you to see it knowing as little as possible. Of course, if you're reading this you may already know the film's basic plot,With that note, some thoughts if you choose to continue reading.I found this a devastating look at the darkly surreal realities of life for women in Afghanistan. Indeed, the English title 'An Afghan Love Story' is as bleakly sardonic a name for a story as I can remember.What's so powerful about the film is the way that title has a very different meaning for the first chunk of the movie, when the film really does play as a sweet story of young love, if in a repressive world.But then the film starts to examine what happens when things go awry in a relationship in a super-patriarchal society where women are made scapegoats and bear all the weight of social disaster. Perhaps because I knew nothing about the film when I saw it, its endlessly deeper turn into blackness caught me off guard and took my breath away. But I'm willing to bet that the strong performances and tragic raw reality of the film would be pretty overwhelming regardless.An important and powerful social document that screams out for change.

So difficult to watch because it portrays the brutal abuse of women in a part of the world that is little understood. This well acted, amazing portrayal of the raw exposure of deeply misogynistic cultural and religious norms that curtail women's freedom in many parts of the world to this day. On top of this, the scenery of third world Afghanistan showing all of the difficulties, dirt, and poverty of this particular country. Even a girl, who comes from a well to do family has to endure and live this kind of trauma; if she were a poor girl, she would have been simply killed by her male relatives with impunity. A must see film!

Afghan Love Story is an excellent movie, and it can happen anywhere that practices honor system rules and arranged marriages - not just Afghanistan. I expected the young couple to be killed without consequence, once her condition became known to the father. Her father was not as harsh as some are and have been. Relationships that are not sanctioned and pregnancy outside of the bonds of marriage can lead to death in more conservative societies. The boy was very irresponsible, and the girl and her family stood to lose everything as a result of his cold-heartedness: standing in society if her condition became common knowledge, shame on the males for permitting this disaster to continue and on and on. I recommend that you watch this film with an open mind and learn about other non-western societies.

I held back watching the movie because I suspected it was going to be a stereotypical love story. But was I in for a surprise. I enjoy so much seeing how non-US cultures live and I was not disappointed. How this affected so severely the woman's side of the family and left the man so free to do his sexual transgressions with no repercussions. I hear a lot of verbal disparaging of feminists (equating them with Marxist etc) in the US but it was not so long ago the pregnancy out of marriage was treated harshly here (not as harshly fortunately as this). Even until the mid 70's it was problematic for women in western societies. So this was a wake up call for me not to become too complacent.

This was a very good movie, you got to see how the women are treated in the Muslims world,how sex before marriage not a common thing, really enjoyed it and felt sorry for the women who have to go through that way of living.I can understand why father in other countries that have a different system the way family should raise there daughters. The man and the women are from two different cultures.