10 Best Movies Set in or About Afghanistan

10 Movies Set in or About Afghanistan

Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Afghanistan.

1. 

   1. The Breadwinner

   2017

   In Taliban-controlled Kabul, a headstrong young girl cuts her hair and passes as a boy to earn money for her family after her father is taken away. This animated drama braids her ordeal together with the folk tale she spins to keep hope alive.

2. 

   2. Lone Survivor

   2013

   Based on a true account, four Navy SEALs on a covert mission to capture a Taliban commander in the mountains of Afghanistan are forced into an impossible moral choice that exposes them to an overwhelming ambush. A visceral survival war drama.

3. 

   3. The Kite Runner

   2007

   Years after fleeing to America, a young Afghan writer returns to his Taliban-ruled homeland to help the family of the childhood friend he once failed. Adapted from Khaled Hosseini's bestseller, it is a story of guilt, loyalty, and the search for redemption.

4. 

   4. Brothers

   Brødre · 2004

   A dependable Danish officer deploys to Afghanistan, where a mission goes catastrophically wrong and he is reported dead. At home, his restless, wayward brother grows close to the grieving family. Susanne Bier's tautly observed drama of two siblings and the war that comes between them.

5. 

   5. War Dogs

   2016

   Based on a true story, two twentysomething friends exploit a government loophole to become international arms dealers, landing a 300-million-dollar Pentagon contract to supply weapons for the war in Afghanistan. A brash dark comedy about ambition and hustle spiraling out of control.

6. 

   6. Brothers

   2009

   When a Marine is presumed dead after his helicopter goes down in Afghanistan, his troubled younger brother steps in to support the widow and children left behind. The soldier's unexpected homecoming ignites a wrenching family drama. A remake of Susanne Bier's Danish film.

7. 

   7. The 9th Company

   9 рота · 2005

   A group of raw Soviet conscripts endures brutal training before shipping out to Afghanistan in the final years of the USSR's war there. Posted to a remote outpost as the insurgency gains strength, they confront the disorienting realities of combat. A Russian war epic.

8. 

   8. A War

   Krigen · 2015

   A Danish company commander stationed in Helmand makes a split-second battlefield decision that later sees him charged and put on trial back home, while his wife struggles to hold the family together alone. A restrained drama about the moral weight of command.

9. 

   9. Forces spéciales

   2011

   After a French war correspondent is taken hostage by the Taliban and faces execution, a special-forces unit is sent deep into hostile country to rescue her. What begins as a swift extraction turns into a punishing pursuit across some of the world's harshest terrain.

10. 

    10. Rambo III

    1988

    Having found a measure of peace at a monastery, Vietnam veteran John Rambo is pulled back into action when his mentor, Colonel Trautman, is captured during a covert mission in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Rambo heads alone into hostile territory to bring him out.