8 /10 1 Votes
Directed by Horace Shansab Edited by Horace Shansab Country Afghanistan Director Horace Ahmad Shansab Producer Horace Ahmad Shansab | 7.9/10 IMDb Cinematography S.A. Wagef Hussaini Running time 142 minutes Initial release 27 August 2006 Music director Ustad Gholam Hussein | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 2006
April 26, 2007 (2007-04-26) (USA) Cast Marina Golbahari, Zubaida Sahar, Nasrine Habibi Screenplay Horace Ahmad Shansab, Zahra Omar Similar Osama, Opium War, The Black Tulip, Earth and Ashes, Buzkashi Boys | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Zolykha's Secret or Rahze Zolykha (2006) is an Afghan film directed by Horace Shansab. It is one of the first feature films produced in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Contents
Plot
The film is set in the last year of the oppressive Taliban era in Afghanistan. The story of Zolykha's Secret is woven around an Afghan family who made their living in a village at the foot of a hill. The family, having suffered the oppressive Taliban war, particularly the last year of the struggle, are making efforts to address new tensions created by another war. Under the most trying conditions, the family struggles to build their hilly abode with mutual support of all members of the family.
In this family, Zolykha is the youngest girl. She is vivacious and curious, and exhibits special psychic powers of extrasensory perception of past events and people whose ghosts haunt their home. Amena and Zalmai are her older siblings, who, in their efforts to decipher the meaning of past tragedies and tribulations (both natural and man-made), convince themselves that a positive future is feasible. However, the eldest daughter of the family questions her destiny, as she had been promised in youth to a man who has since become a cruel and vicious militant. Her father realizes the injustice awaiting his daughter and then protests and fights for his daughter's honour. However, events take a tragic turn. This forces the siblings to flee the countryside to the city with the help of a Taliban convert, who against his strict orders, decides to help them.
Production
The film, one of the first major Afghani features post 2001, was filmed in Afghanistan entirely with an Afghan 'cast and crew'. It has been produced in Dari, Pashtu and Arabic languages, and also with English sub-titles. For the soundtrack, local Afghan music was interpreted by Ustad Gholam Hussein and Shereen Agha.