| Overview: | STRAY DOGS is the beautifully crafted and moving story of Gol Ghoti, Zahed and Twiggy - a girl, a boy and a dog in Afghanistan, just after the war has ended in 2001. The film is written and directed by Marziyeh Meshkini, the Iranian director of 'The Day I Became a Woman', and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2004, where it won the PREMIO OPEN. Meshkini gives us in STRAY DOGS insight in post-Taliban Afghan life and focuses on the effects of abject misery, poverty and oppression on the lives of women and children.
Gol Ghoti (around 5 years old) and her older brother Zahed live on the streets of Kabul. Their father, a Taliban, is in prison after having been away for more than five years. At night they stay with their mother, who is in another prison, where she awaits a trial for adultery - she married another believing her first husband was dead. The children spend the night in prison with their mother, and during the day rummage through garbage in search of something useful they can sell. Gol Ghoti saves a dog from being killed by angry kids who believe it to be a western dog. The dog is good company, which they need as they aren't allowed to sleep in prison anymore. Desperate to be arrested and returned to prison, the children embark upon a series of failed robberies, until a fugitive tells them they can learn how to steal from Hollywood movies or alternatively, a European film - 'The Bicycle Thieves' - can teach them how to get caught.
Meshkini uses a documentary, neo-realist style to film Afghan life after the Taliban, referring to the films made about the raw life in post-war Italy. The trio of strays - Zahed, Gol Ghoti and their dog - represents an entire people searching for a means of survival in a world of confusion and strife.
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