From Cartoon Saloon, the ace animation studio based in Ireland has created another beautifully crafted 2D animation. Based on the novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner follows Parvana, a young girl living in Taliban controlled Kabul, Afghanistan. After her father is wrongfully arrested and taken to prison, she, her older sister, mother and baby brother are left to fend for themselves. With the impossible and cruel rules forced on women, Parvana cuts her air and dresses as a boy in order to provide for her family.
Just like Song of the Sea, the animation is beautiful. Embarcing the sights, sounds, colours of Afghanistan, beyond the brutal day to day life, there is still hope and moments of joy to be shared. The fairytale like story Parvana tells her brother, later her friend, who also dresses as boy and finally to herself as war breaks out in the prison, binds the whole film together. It peices gether what happened to her older brother who died but no one will talk about him. The story comforts Parvana as well as othere around her. Forgetting for a short while the situation they are all in.
The attention to detail is superb, whether it is in the bedtime story Parvana tells throughout the film, slightly mirroring what is happening in real life or in the family home, when they sit down to share their meal or within the framing, their is pain and hope side by side. One particular moments which is cutting as well as heartbreaking, showing just how everyone is affected by the war, the regime, Parvana, dressed as boy, reads a letter for a stranger. We see the man sit next to her and all you can see are his hands peeling an apple, as she reads his wife has been killed by a bus hitting a landmine, he stops and slowly drops the apple and knife. Without seeing the man's face, his grief is hard hitting as he silents gets up and walks away. Moments such as this makie the film stand out in memory.
Director Nora Towmey bring together a story we haven't seen before in a setting we still don't see much about.