The Kite Runner

Directed by Marc Foster ( Stranger Than Fiction, Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland ) and based on the acclaimed novel by Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner is a story of an unlikely friendship, betrayal and ultimately redemption.

The film flashes back to the Afghanistan of the 1970s on the verge war. It is a time pre-Soviet invasion, before the tyranny of the Taliban and prior to occupation by the West. The audience is drawn into the camaraderie between Amir and Hassan, two young Afghan boys from disparate social castes. Amir, played by Zekiria Ebrahimi, is from a privileged background living in the affluent city Kabul, previously renowned as ‘the pearl of central Asia’. He has never known his mother, who died during childbirth, and desperately seeks the love and approval of his emotionally distant father. Amir has grown up with the son of his father’s servant, Hassan, heart-warmingly portrayed by Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada. Though uneducated, Hassan has an innate wisdom and is ever-loyal with a happy-go-lucky disposition.

The only combat taking place in the skies over Afghanistan at the time are innocent kite flying tournaments. The object of the game is simple: engage in aerial duel, out manoeuvre your opponent, cut their string and vie for the honour of being the last kite flying. As kites fall from the sky, children race through the streets of Kabul to claim them, a skill Hassan is particularly deft at, having the uncanny ability to always arrive before the kite lands. One year, the boys’ victory in the kite flying tournament is short-lived and a series of events are set in motion that will ultimately lead Amir on an epic quest for redemption.

Hassan is assaulted by local bullies and Amir, paralysed by fear, can only look on. Shamed by his cowardice, he spurns his friendship with Hassan and plots to have he and his father evicted from the family home. Wartime then ensues – Amir is smuggled across the border into Pakistan by his father and they immigrate to the United States.

The film returns to present-day San Francisco, where the now adult Amir receives a fateful phone call that leads him on a perilous journey home to a now unrecognisable, war-ravaged Kabul in search for a way ‘to be good again’.

The adaptation of such an epic novel, spanning three decades and as many continents, was always going to be challenging, particularly one so emotionally involving and widely loved as The Kite Runner. Screenwriter David Benioff took on this unenviable role and has produced a well-paced script faithful to the novel. The decision to translate it into an Afghan dialect was masterful and adds to the authenticity of the film. Foster brings Hosseini’s bestseller to life with a globally diverse cast that astonishingly includes a large number of non-professional actors, including those in the lead child roles who were selected from Afghanistan – it results in raw and thoroughly convincing performances. Foster has also subtly employed CGI to depict the former grandeur of Kabul and the flight of kites over Afghan rooftops. Filmed in the deserts of western China bordering Afghanistan, this marks the first time the Chinese landscape has been used to depict another country and introduces us to a world not previously seen in film.

The Kite Runner is currently screening nationally through Paramount Pictures.

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