Yazar 
What makes a man good? This question sits at the heart of No Good Men, directed by Shahrbanoo Sadat. Naru, a young Afghan woman working as a TV reporter, takes to the streets of Kabul to find an answer. She asks ordinary men this question and builds a documentary from their responses. The film takes its name from one of those interviews.
No Good Men unfolds along two parallel tracks: a romantic journey and a shifting political landscape. Naru covers the everyday lives of people on the streets, weaving her professional and personal worlds together. The film speaks in multiple registers at once — love, journalism, and the political tensions of Afghanistan — and each layer deepens as the next one opens.
The film is a Danish-Afghan-French-German co-production and had its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. No Good Men is the fourth feature by director Shahrbanoo Sadat, who is celebrated for her autobiographical approach to Afghan storytelling. The film arrived on MUBI on July 3.
Feminism Seeping Through Society’s Cracks
The most striking quality of No Good Men is how it portrays female solidarity rather than simply addressing women’s rights. Naru’s economic independence, her freedom to move through the city with a camera, and her male colleagues’ casual acceptance of her as a professional — all of this sketches a picture of women resisting through small, everyday acts.
Female friendships and moments of solidarity occupy an important place in the film. The scene in which Naru and her friends laugh and gossip about men after a Taliban interview is one of the most striking: it lays bare both the political danger and the ordinary lives that continue alongside it, side by side.
Anita’s gift to Naru — a daring gesture that touches on sexuality and the body — desacralizes a subject that is taboo in Afghan society. The film handles it with both humor and courage; it neither moralizes nor tips into melodrama.
Love as a Bridge Between Themes
The relationship between Naru and Qodrat begins in classic enemies-to-lovers fashion. They start out as rivals in the world of journalism, but as the narrative advances, the professional and the personal converge in ways that neither of them expected.
Naru climbs the career ladder through the Valentine’s Day street interviews she records; at the same time, Qodrat begins to grow in her eyes as a man. Their chemistry is one of the film’s most compelling dynamics, and the script makes full use of it without rushing the transformation.
As the film progresses, Naru starts to question her own thesis of “no good men.” Love becomes the lens through which she measures not only Qodrat but the entire political system around her. This is what elevates No Good Men beyond a simple romantic comedy and turns it into a political statement.
A New Definition of Love
In the film’s third act, the conflict sharpens. Qodrat and Naru’s professional rivalry escalates around a story about fake bulletproof vests sold to security forces — a subject that places them both in physical danger.
Against the backdrop of conditions pushing Afghanistan toward the brink, the characters’ confrontations in a restaurant and their attempts to reach some kind of reckoning reflect the country’s unresolved contradictions with quiet accuracy.
In the final twenty minutes, No Good Men becomes something that can barely be called a romantic comedy. Black Thursday, Biden’s withdrawal announcement, the Taliban’s advance on Kabul — these events unfold in a swift montage. Yet in the very last shot, Qodrat runs to Naru. It is an ending that is simultaneously devastating and life-affirming.
A Multicultural Viewing Pleasure
No Good Men builds its cultural texture from Afghanistan’s many layers of influence. The dialogue moves between Pashto, Dari, and German — the film was partly shot in Germany — and this linguistic plurality enriches the narrative rather than creating confusion. The film manages to render a complex geography visible without reducing it to a single story.
The music is equally layered: Farsi and Hindi melodies evoking nostalgia sit alongside Western pop. Modern Talking’s “Brother Louie” appears at an unexpected moment, and the contrast lands perfectly. No Good Men is a film capable of bringing people from very different cultural backgrounds — Afghans, Europeans, fans of world cinema — together in front of the same screen.
The review was written by Burcu Demirer.
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