Will “Opium War” match “Osama” success?
Posted by Lucio Maurizi on October 23, 2008 under Academy award, Film Festival, Foreign Film | 
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Well, first of all I must admit that I’ve never seen this movie but it looks interesting all around, starting from the catchy title.
Opium War is the latest work by the director Siddiq Barmak and the Afghan submission for Best Foreign Movie at the next Academy Award.
Two American soldiers, after a helicopter crash, find themselves in an unknown territory and meet people and families that rescue them. This locals live in poverty and struggle to get to the end of the day and not only have nothing to do with the war, but don’t even wanna know anything about it.
The two soldiers are thrown into a reality that they didn’t expect and that, probably, none of us would expect, being in the same situation, considering what the media let us know about Afghanistan. For as far as most of us can remember this country rhymes with war and our self inflicted brain wash, doesn’t allow us to think about anithing else when it comes to this state.
Now, this movie, might give us another prospective and I’m confident it will, being that I’m very attached, emotionally, to the previous and first movie of the same director, Osama, the drama of a way too young girl, forced to pretend to be a boy, in order to find a job and help provide for herself and her family. Osama won many prizes, earning them, in my opinion, and I hope Opium War will have the same faith.
In the meantime, what I can do is highly recommend Osama, and also recommend to have faith in Opium War, even though I cannot give you an objective opinion, yet.
Given the opportunity and the simile titles there is another movie that I would like to suggest, even though not so new and fresh: The Opium War. A 1997 historical epic, directed by the Chinese filmmaker Xie Jin, winner of several prizes and shown in many festivals.
The film tells the story of the Opium War between the Empire of China in the waning days of the Qing Dinasty and the British Empire, through the eyes of key figures like the fiercely nationalistic Lin Zexu, and the British naval diplomat Charles Elliot.
Unlike many of its contemporaries, The Opium War was strongly supported by the state apparatus. Despite its clear political message, western audiences found the treatment of the historical events to be generally even-handed.
At the time of its release, The Opium War with a budget of US$15 million dollars was the most expensive film produced in China. It was released to coincide with the Honk Kong handover cremony in July 1997.
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