The Golden Globe for Osama was the icing on the cake after it became the first Afghan film ever presented at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected for the Director's Fortnight and received a special mention for directorial debuts. He also won top spot at London and Montreal film festivals.

Afghanistan's now renowned filmmaker, Barmak walks out of the room he has been sequestered at in the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton Hotel, sun-baked skin glowing, hand extended.

"Am I glad to see a Dari-speaker! I've been tongue tied all day trying to speak English to these American reporters," he says as he shakes my hand firmly.

Inside the pressroom where he has been sitting for the last five hours answering repetitive questions in what I consider proficient English, Barmak relaxes. He's comfortable and coherent, looking me in the eye with confidence.

United Artists, the distributor of Osama, has given me 30 minutes for the interview. Each reporter gets that much time. The good news is that he speaks a lot faster in Dari than English. The 41-year-old looks dapper in his white t-shirt and black suit. He offers me the untouched fruit tart in front of him.

The character Osama (Marina Golbahari) is a 12-year-old girl who pretends to be a boy so she can work and support her mother and grandmother. All the men in her family have died in the decades of war. Her street friend Espandi gives her the name Osama so that the boys in the neighborhood believe she is a boy. The film's plot centers on her attempts to hide her true gender. Yet the final tragedy in the film occurs when she is discovered to be a girl and is punished by the Taliban's draconian laws.

Some Afghans readily dismiss his award and say he won because the film panders to US policy against the Taliban. But Barmak clarifies.

"It is a new perspective on an Afghan experience. It's about Afghan women and humanity," he says.

Barmak is making the success of his film an opportunity to demand accountability on the promises the international community made to Afghanistan three years ago. He articulated his political message in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globe.

"I would like to dedicate this prize to the people who lost their trust in too much promises, to the people who lost the meaning of 'luck' and to the people who gave me a wonderful film, Osama."

The film is political but Barmak's message focuses on human suffering. It is a haunting account of the plight of women under the Taliban. I visited Afghanistan under the Taliban in the year 2000 and watching the film in New York City this year brought back memories of the psychological fear and entrapment that people felt under the regime.

Women and girls were not allowed to go to school or work under the Taliban. Barmak's movie shows a society besieged by gender apartheid and its impact on families. Women's oppression under the Taliban has been the subject of hundreds of books and films but many of those projects fail to relay a clear understanding of the issue. With riveting detail and color, Osama reconstructs the misery of five years in Kabul in less than two hours through the life of a young girl.

We never know her name in the movie. Barmak intentionally left her name out to show the crisis of identity. Osama loses herself in the disguise of a boy and her feminine attributes. Amateur Afghan actors chosen from the streets and the professional Iranian cinematographer light up the screen. It's hard to believe that the main character Golbahari, now 14, was a beggar near Park Cinema in Kabul. She begged to Barmak for money and he said he looked into her eyes and knew she was the right person for the role.

The film became Barmak's brainchild after he received a letter from a friend in Kabul recounting a true tale about a girl who disguised herself as a boy to survive during the Taliban years. The idea was realized when Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaaf and other investors from Japan and Ireland decided to believe in Barmak.

"I forgot to thank Mr. Makhmalbaaf last night and I'm very sorry about that. I couldn't have done this without him. He gave me $100,000 for the project and said if this film makes money, pay me back and keep the profits. If it fails, we'll kiss each other on the cheek and start another film."

Barmak, who studied film in Moscow during the 1980s, wrote the screenplays for two short films adapted from Persian short stories. The Taliban destroyed them, but I was lucky enough to see a pirated copy. Both shorts were made during President Najibullah's secular government, and they detail the complications of life for women in the country.

The Stranger stars Salaam Sangi who is driven to murder after his feudal landlord forces his wife to sing in front of a foreign male guest. Murad, the character, is killed by the landlord's men as his wife waits for him to return home.

Barmak uses sparse but powerful dialogue between a mother and young son to tell a heart wrenching story in The Shadow, which was shot in black and white. A mother grapples with giving up her child because her new husband wants the boy gone.

"I cannot stand the sight of him knowing he's not mine and imagining you in bed with another man! Get rid of him!" the man screams as the boy cries in the background.

The issue of women's suppression in Afghanistan did not begin with the Taliban and neither did Barmak's interest in the subject. The real life stories of honor, shame and chastity provide gripping tales for his films. But the films seem to also advocate for equality, for reflection on the country's unjust traditions against women. Off the screen, Barmak helped Golbahari stop begging and she is starring in other films now.

Barmak has lived in Afghanistan nearly all his life. Besides film school in Moscow, he fled to Pakistan during the Taliban regime. He returned after the US-led bombing campaign ended in Kabul.

The husband and father of three children says he has no intention of leaving Afghanistan. He has regained his position as the head of the Afghan government's Afghan Film Organization (AFO), which archives and funds films and the director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts. He is eager to work with new Afghan filmmakers and repatriating exiles who have skills to offer.

"You have to come back because we need you to help reconstruct the country. If the locals are critical, you need to be patient and keep working," he says with absolute conviction.

And before I can get to my next question, United Artists knocks on the door. Time is up and Barmak is ready for his next interview-- prim and proper with a big smile and an infinite amount of hope in his heart.