One of the first things we see in Torbaaz is children playing a game of football. It reminded me of Afghan Girls Can Kick, a 2008 documentary about the first female soccer team of Afghanistan, as they rise over poverty and oppression to play their first derby match.

Girish Malik’s film (out on Netflix) wants to tell a similar story, but brings an outsider’s perspective to its subject matter: young kids turning to sport in a specific context and time. Naseer (Sanjay Dutt) returns to Kabul several years after his wife and son were killed in a bombing incident. Reluctantly, he helps Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri) run an orphanage his late wife had set up.

A visit to a nearby refugee camp brings on a change of heart: instead of giving up on the kids growing up under the Taliban’s grip, he wants to introduce them to cricket, hoping it will nudge them to a better future. While Naseer’s proposal is well-intentioned, the same cannot be said about his plans. Early on in the film, he stages a friendly match inside the camp.

The poor children look on as he passes around expensive gear: bats, helmets, protective pads. It’s a bit shameful that these kids are seduced not by the joy of play, as one would like to think, but by their natural yearning for stuff they can never have. Cricket is a rich man’s sport – this scene seems to confirm – and Naseer’s kindness an act of charity. As word spreads around the camp, more and more kids join in. But before they can play their first match, a mutiny breaks out. Baaz, an orphaned ‘Talib’ kid from Pakistan, won’t gel with the local Afghans.
Source: indiatoday.in