A surprising and touching Afghan political rom-com that is said to feature the first ever on-screen kiss in an Afghan movie opens the 76th Berlin Film Festival Thursday.

Set in a Kabul newsroom in 2021, with the Taliban on the cusp of returning to power, "No Good Men" tells the workplace love story of camerawoman Naru, separated from her cheating husband and struggling to keep custody of her young son while trying to build a career in a male dominated industry and patriarchal society.

Director Shahrbanoo Sadat said the kissing scene cost her lead actor three weeks before shooting began, and forced her to step into the role herself.

"The joke was everyone who wanted to play Naru, they didn't want to do the kissing, I wanted to do the kissing, I didn't want to do the rest of the film," Sadat said.

And it wasn't just the casting that was met with resistance. The Afghan film industry is small, she said, so the expectation is that the movie will be "good PR" for the country.

Sadat had her own ideas, though.

"I love Afghanistan, but I cannot close my eyes to patriarchy, sexism, all the big topics, and just say the good things about Afghanistan, so I'm disappointing my people," she said.

Making an Afghan film in Europe, with European funding, she also felt added pressure to be a political and feminist filmmaker or make a war movie.

Sadat received multiple letters of complaint from funders who said it was inappropriate for them to support a rom-com given the political situation in Afghanistan.

"For me it was like, wait a minute, what? I feel offended that you feel offended about my project," she said. "I'm coming from a war country, and this is my way of expressing myself, to go through the oceans of... Read More