No Good Men: Do Good Men Really Exist? A Review of the Berlinale's Unexpected Opening

It had been a few years since the Berlinale had delivered an opening as convincing and exciting as No Good Men: Shahrbanoo Sadat's third feature film, while employing a very simple narrative and a sparse, almost elementary cinematic language, captivates and surprises precisely thanks to a hopeful lightness and a conscious, ironic romanticism that seems almost out of place given the film's setting.

The Afghan director once again draws inspiration from the stories of her friend Anwar Hashimi, a former television producer in Kabul. Years ago, Hashimi convinced Sadat that, indeed, good men exist even in Afghanistan, despite the culture and social context pushing males to be the worst version of themselves, especially with the women in their lives.

The feature film's Kabul is recreated in Germany due to the impossibility of filming in the actual locations where the story is set, which is precisely the point of the film. No Good Men opens in a complicated situation for the protagonist Naru (played by the director herself), a television camerawoman for four years at a well-known broadcaster in the Afghan capital. The woman, who ended up working for Kabul TV to support her son and her idle, de facto separated husband, is forced to direct dreadful afternoon shows designed for a female audience. A poor listener who calls for help after her husband beat her and cast her aside for a mistress is advised to wear more makeup, because, as they say, “with every pregnancy a woman loses a few petals.”

The film opens with a vibrant sequence of cactus flowers blooming in fast motion: we later discover this is a metaphor for the women of a country where no one ever tells them “I love you.” Naru ends up collecting their voices in a local market after her reporter colleague Qodrat (Anwar Hashimi) leaves her there to gather short vox pop interviews about Valentine's Day. His is revenge against her, for making him accidentally save an important political interview. The punishment, however, ends up revealing Naru's talent, as she is capable, unlike her colleagues, of getting women to speak in front of the camera: all the interviewees are convinced, as the title suggests, that there are no good men in Afghanistan.

Men Who Don't Love Women

The film, though not in a very refined manner, delves into this premise. No Good Men doesn't stop at criticizing the negative behavior of the Afghan male population, but rather questions a national landscape devoid of positive male role models. No Good Men is not so much concerned with pointing fingers as it is with asking why in Kabul and its surroundings “I love you” is a purely hypothetical phrase, one heard only in movies. Through Naru's young son, Liam, the film shows how the men of tomorrow live surrounded by fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who are violent and rude to their wives, whose intelligence and work capacity are constantly underestimated. Certain vicious cycles, certain stereotypes, are then reinforced, not without a certain enthusiasm, even by the women who suffer them.

The journalist Qodrat, however, seems to prove different, respecting Naru's professionalism as a camerawoman and implying that he appreciates her as a person: can one truly believe that such a respectful man exists, raised in a country where women must fight every day for every minimal form of respect? What already seems like a very harsh reality, navigated with intelligence and irony by the protagonist, turns out to be a kind of Eden destined to collapse once the historical period in which the story takes place is framed.

No Good Men is reminiscent of My Persian Garden, but without the same wit

The Afghanistan full of challenges but still slowly changing in No Good Men is, unfortunately, only a memory today, erased by the Taliban's return to power. It is from this perspective that one truly appreciates the space of freedom that Naru and her friends have carved out and seek to expand, even alongside men who do not deserve them. Despite the evidently heavy themes and the political key of the story, No Good Men also surprises, and above all, by how it manages to maintain a glimmer of hope, a touch of lightness, also thanks to the romantic comedy framework that it gradually implements into the story. The small tragedy revealed by its emotional ending is that, to confirm or deny the presence of a good man in Kabul, an exceptionally dangerous and dramatic historical context is needed.

No Good Men follows in the footsteps of My Persian Garden, another film presented at the Berlinale a few years ago that depicted a lost era in a difficult country for women like Iran, where the older generation still remembers (and to some extent enjoys) what today seem like true privileges for its inhabitants. In No Good Men, the generational narrative works in reverse: it is Qodrat who feels old and inadequate compared to how direct and combative Naru proves to be in asserting her rights and those of women. Sadat's problem is a marked immaturity as a screenwriter: her plot completely lacks the writing sophistication of the duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. Sadat draws inspiration from her experiences and those of her acquaintances, but struggles to transform them into something else and to give her reflection on gender relations in her country of origin a complexity that would make the film more incisive and less predictable.