‘The Breadwinner’ is a powerful story about finding hope in the face of cruel oppression

Posted on March 16, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

Love or hate the Academy Awards, one good by-product of the overly-long production is that if you actually pay attention to the nominees — rather than the dresses or the political rants — you might hear about a movie (or a dozen) that you didn’t previously know about. Even I will often discover a hidden gem that had escaped my notice. This most happens in the Best Animated Feature category, because the Academy tends to mine deeper here than in most other categories — except perhaps Best Song — for obscure films to nominate. There has been at least one unexpected independent feature tossed in amongst the Pixar and Dreamworks favorites every year now for about a decade.

This year, the unknown participant was “The Breadwinner,” the latest film from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, which is now three for three in receiving Oscar nominations for its features, having already scored nods for 2009’s “The Secret of Kells” and 2015’s “Song of the Sea.” This time they leave the British Isles and bring their unique animation style to an adaptation of Deborah Ellis’ novel about a young girl living under the harsh rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The result is a wonderful film seeped in the culture of the Afghan people, all the while shining a spotlight on the repressive regime of the Taliban, especially in its treatment of women.

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