News Summary

Mideast meets Midwest in 'The Beauty Academy of Kabul'
by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

Is the blow-dryer mightier than the sword? In the oddball documentary "The Beauty Academy of Kabul," it might well be. Shot in 2003 after the Taliban had left, the movie chronicles the efforts of some women from America — a couple of them born in Afghanistan and returning after decades — to open a beauty school in a country where, until recently, a woman could be beaten for exposing an inch of skin on her arm or leg. No telling what the punishment for mascara might've been. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
After the Taliban's fall, six beauticians opened Afghanistan's first beauty school. Including three Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in 20 years, the group set out to teach the latest hair-cutting techniques to Afghan woman trying to overcome their oppressive surroundings.

FILM FACTS ...

Shadow Distribution

'The Beauty Academy of Kabul'

Director: Liz Mermin
Starring: Mary MacMakin, Terri Grauel, Patricia O'Connor
Run time: 74 minutes
Release date: March 24, 2006
Rating: Not rated; contains references to war violence and images of guns.

On the web
Official movie site

READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B-
"These women's hearts are in the right place and so is the movie's."

Read the full review

Austin American-Statesman: 3 of 5 stars
"The opportunity to meet these women is the film's main draw. Not only do they offer a fresh account of their nation's long nightmare, giving first-person life to what most Americans know only from wartime news reports, they provide a glimpse of how a soul might survive such circumstances."