BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: There's a movie opening this week in New York and Los Angeles about the Taliban, the Muslim extremists who once ruled Afghanistan. It's called OSAMA -- not for Osama bin Laden, but for an Afghan girl who dresses up as a boy so she can earn money for her family. It's the first feature film to be shot in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. OSAMA won a Golden Globe award last month for best foreign film. Mary Alice Williams has a review.

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Widows mass in the streets begging for the right to work -- to feed their children. Taliban soldiers open fire and hoses. Toddlers are swamped in the tide.

OSAMA is based on the true story of a 12-year-old girl caught in the crucible of Afghanistan's autocratic theocracy. After years of war, many of its men are dead or dying, the women oppressed, desperate. Since only males are allowed to work for sustenance, the girl's mother and grandmother conspire to disguise her as a boy.

Osama (From Film OSAMA): If the Taliban recognize me they will kill me.

Grandmother (From Film OSAMA): My dear, we'll starve to death if you don't work.

WILLIAMS: Shorn of her hair and her identity, Osama finds menial labor. Then she's rounded up with all the boys to be schooled and called to prayer and taught the most intimate of male religious rituals -- ablutions to cleanse them of impurities. But the film casts all of it in the light of depravity.