Marina Golbahari is an Afghan actress known for her role as the main character in the movie “Osama” (directed by Siddiq Barmak). “Osama” won the prestigious Golden Globe award for best foreign film at a ceremony in California, USA in January 2004. Golbahari’s role in the movie was well received by many critics. Golbahari was working on the streets of Kabul as a beggar, when she was discovered by Barmak, who cast her in his movie. “Osama” is the story of a young girl during the oppressive rule of the Taliban who is forced to dress like a boy named Osama in order to provide for her mother and grandmother. During the Taliban, women were forbidden to work or even leave the house without a “legal companion”. Marina Golbahari was born in 1989 in Kabul.
Golbahari figures prominently in the 2012 book, Shakespeare in Kabul, by Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan. The book chronicles a 2005 performance in the Dari language of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost that was presented in Kabul and then in other parts of Afghanistan the following year.