Film

The Breadwinner

Name: The Breadwinner
Genre: Animation, War, Drama
Released: 2017
Cast: Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Noorin Gulamgaus, Laara Sadiq, Ali Badshah

An animated drama set in Taliban-era Kabul, following an eleven-year-old girl who cuts her hair and dresses as a boy to keep her family fed after her father is arrested. Cartoon Saloon's hand-painted style softens nothing about the danger, and weaves in a shadow-puppet fable that mirrors Parvana's own courage. Tender, clear-eyed, and honest enough for older children as much as adults.

TMDb rating

7.8

If you liked this

Persepolis2007

Marjane Satrapi's own coming-of-age memoir, told in stark black-and-white animation, follows a girl growing up under a revolution that keeps rewriting the rules of her life. Funny, furious and devastating in exactly the way Parvana's story is.

But The animation is deliberately flat and graphic-novel spare — if you want the lush watercolour warmth of The Breadwinner, this will feel colder.

Osama2004no page yet

The film that first told this exact story in Afghanistan, live-action and shot largely with non-actors. A girl disguises herself as a boy to survive Taliban rule, and the danger feels unbearably close because it's real faces, real streets.

But No animated distance to soften anything — it's bleaker, slower, and offers almost none of the warmth or hope The Breadwinner allows itself.

Wolfwalkers2020

Made by the same studio, Cartoon Saloon, with that unmistakable hand-drawn, folk-art texture. A girl and a wild outsider push back against an occupying force that fears what it can't control — the politics wear a fairy-tale coat.

But Set in seventeenth-century Ireland with wolves and magic, so if you wanted something grounded in the real world, this drifts into myth.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Sonita2016no page yet

Same defiance, same closed-off society, but no animation to cushion it — this is Parvana's disguise and daring played out by an actual girl, with actual consequences.

A real Afghan teenager, living as a refugee in Iran, fights her family's plan to sell her into marriage by rapping about it — filmed as it happens, with the director eventually paying off her bride price herself.

But It's a documentary with rough, unpolished footage and an ethically messy filmmaker-subject relationship that the film itself argues about on camera.

The Kite Runner2007no page yet

A sweeping, painful story of Afghanistan before and after the Taliban, following one family across decades of upheaval, guilt and exile. It gives the wider historical arc that The Breadwinner only glimpses.

But It's a longer, more melodramatic canvas centred on men and boys — you lose Parvana's specific, girl's-eye view of the same world.

Song of the Sea2014

Another Cartoon Saloon fable, gentler than Wolfwalkers, about a brother and sister and the myths tangled up in their grief. The animation has that same painterly, storybook warmth.

But There's no war, no real-world danger — if you came for the political weight, this is a much softer, quieter watch.

Turtles Can Fly2004no page yet

Kurdish children on the Iraq-Turkey border, living among landmines and satellite dishes, waiting for an American invasion they've been told will save them. Unflinching, shot through with the same dark comedy that keeps Parvana's story bearable.

But It's harsher and more hopeless than The Breadwinner allows itself to be — there's little of that film's tenderness towards its ending.

Waltz with Bashir2008

An animated memoir about a soldier trying to recover buried memories of the 1982 Lebanon War, using rotoscope animation to get at trauma that resists straight documentary. Proof that animation can carry the weight of real atrocity.

But This is an adult film about adult guilt and violence — no child's perspective, no hope held out at the end.

My Life as a Zucchini2016

Stop-motion, French, about children in a care home after losing their parents to violence or neglect. It finds real tenderness and humour in hardship without ever softening what happened to get them there.

But The stakes are domestic rather than political — no war, no regime, just grief. A gentler cousin, not a companion piece.

In This World2003no page yet

A documentary-style drama following two Afghan refugees smuggled overland to London, shot almost like reportage. It shows what happens to a family like Parvana's once they're forced to actually flee.

But Shaky, handheld and unglamorous by design — there's none of the animated film's visual beauty to soften the journey.

Yentl1983

Strip away the war and you've got the same engine as The Breadwinner: a girl who becomes a boy to claim a freedom her gender denies her. Same moral question, opposite register entirely.

Barbra Streisand disguises herself as a boy to study Torah in a world that forbids women an education, singing her way through every risk of discovery. Warm, funny, and unexpectedly moving under all the sequins.

But It's a big, sincere eighties musical — if the idea of Streisand breaking into song mid-crisis makes you wince, this isn't for you.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed1926

The Breadwinner uses shadow-puppet-style storytelling for Parvana's own folk tale within the film — Prince Achmed is the great-grandparent of that technique, animating stories of this same region ninety years earlier.

The oldest surviving animated feature film, made using intricate cut-paper silhouettes to tell a story lifted from the Arabian Nights — a flying horse, a sorcerer, a rescued princess. Genuinely gorgeous, still strange nearly a century later.

But Silent, black-and-white and told entirely through shadow-puppet silhouettes — a big ask if you want anything resembling modern pacing or colour.