No Good Men

No Good Men tells the story of Naru and, through her, that of all Afghan women just before the Taliban's seizure of power in 2021. A few months before the fall of Kabul, Naru is the only camerawoman at the capital's leading TV station. Both on and off the work floor, she is constantly confronted with sexism. On top of that, she has to fight to retain custody of her young son and to stay out of the clutches of her unfaithful husband. For Naru, it's clear: in Afghanistan, there are no good men. Or can her colleague Qodrat make her change her mind amid all the chaos?

Making an Afghan romcom was the dream of director, screenwriter and lead actress Shahrbanoo Sadat. It had never been done before, so she decided to do it herself. Without romanticising how things were even before the Taliban regime — because when Sadat began writing the screenplay in 2019, the freedoms of women like Naru had already been curtailed by the patriarchy. As a counter-voice, the soundtrack mainly features female singers, notably Nazia Iqbal, Rahil Yousufzai, Naghma and Parasto Mehryar (alongside new instrumental tracks by Norwegian musician Therese Aune). No Good Men is also a response to the war dramas that, according to Sadat, represent the country too one-sidedly abroad. The popular genre allows her to further humanise Afghan characters on the big screen. A political romantic comedy, then, that also isn't afraid to shift in tone.

Born in Tehran, Shahrbanoo Sadat swapped Kabul for Hamburg in 2021. The film is accordingly a co-production involving, among others, Germany, where the Afghan capital was recreated, and it opened this year's Berlin International Film Festival. No Good Men is Sadat's third feature in a planned series of five. As with her Wolf and Sheep (2016) and The Orphanage (2019), cinematography and editing are handled by (Belgian) Virginie Surdej and Alexandra Strauss respectively. All five films are based on the unpublished diaries of Anwar Hashimi. Himself a former TV journalist and reporter, he plays Naru's love interest. The film is dedicated to the staff of news channel TOLO who were killed in a Taliban suicide attack in early 2016.