Opening the Berlin film festival, No Good Men blends romance and rebellion, capturing love, humour and female agency in Kabul on the eve of the Taliban’s return
‘A
fghanistan’s first romantic comedy” was not the easiest of sales pitches, director Shahrbanoo Sadat admits. But her long shot of a movie landed her the opening slot at the Berlin film festival starting Thursday, sending her in the red-carpet footsteps of the likes of Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers.
Sadat, 35, wrote, directed and stars in the daring, genre-bending film No Good Men, about a budding love affair in a Kabul newsroom on the eve of the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 and the west’s chaotic withdrawal.
During the years-long gestation of the picture, Sadat found herself stranded on a writing retreat in Germany by the pandemic, then witnessing the febrile last days of democracy in Afghanistan. Finally, she was evacuated to Europe in fear for her life as Kabul fell to the Taliban.
