The Breadwinner
Director: Nora Twomey
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 3.0
When her father is imprisoned for no valid reason, pre-teen Parvana (voiced by Saara Chaudry) has to take over as the family patriarch (in backwards Afghanistan) by disguising herself as a boy and taking on odd jobs for money ... and planning how to free her one-legged Pop. While it might be a little too measured for its own good, it's a sweet and well-intentioned animated picture, made with true heart, about doing anything to survive in ghastly circumstances ... and also using storytelling (there's a movie-within-the-movie about a boy trying to find lost seeds and chased by a red dust storm) and food as comfort. This is based on the Young Adult novel by Canadian writer and activist Deborah Ellis, and although she's been threatened by the Taliban, I fully support her using talents to make the public aware of what's going on in the Middle East, and how people suffer at the hands of warlords ... and each other.
