PARIS: The feted star of an internationally-acclaimed film, Afghan actress Marina Golbahari and her husband have been chased from their home to the brink of suicide in a filthy French asylum shelter after she was photographed without a veil.
Fearful for their lives, the couple has kept a low profile since their arrival just over five months ago for a film festival.
“We never thought of staying,” said Azizi. “We hardly packed anything.” But death threats back home to them and their family, they said, ruled out a return.
Golbahari was only 10-years-old in late 2001 when she was plucked from the streets of Kabul and thrust to stardom as the heroine in the Golden Globe-winning film “Osama.”
She had been selling magazines on the streets of the capital and had witnessed the violence of the recently-toppled Taliban regime first hand when her father was beaten in front of her.
In the film, she played a girl who disguises herself as a boy during the Taliban’s rule so that she can walk freely on the street.
“Osama” was a hit and made Golbahari, now 24, an instant star in her country.
“Cinema is my life,” she told AFP. “In a film, I can say everything about my people.”
Her husband, Noorullah Azizi, also found a way out of grinding poverty through Afghanistan’s burgeoning film industry.
He grew up in Pakistan among the millions of Afghan refugees who had fled the Soviet war of the 1980s. A picture of Golbahari, head uncovered, at a festival in South Korea drew the ire of her countrymen. The imam in her local village of Kapisa announced that she should not return, which Azizi said translates as: “She must die.”
Afghan filmstar in French exile after death threats
Afghan filmstar in French exile after death threats
