Rethink Rebuild Society showed film of ‘The Kite Runner’ on Sunday 20 December 2015 followed by a discussion about the film and how it links to the current social affairs in Syria.
The film was made in 2007, and Nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film “The Kite Runner” is based on a best-selling novel by the Afghan-American doctor and novelist Khaled Hosseini. In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It’s a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day’s victory, one boy’s fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after 20 years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban's rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan but left the country in 1976 at the age of 11, eventually moving to the United States where he worked as a doctor. He wrote his first novel, The Kite Runner, in 2003 and became a full-time writer a year and a half later. He published his second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, in 2007. Both novels were successful, and by the time of his third publication they had together sold over 38 million copies across 70 countries. His third and latest novel, And the Mountains Echoed, published in 2013, has received favorable pre-publication reviews and was another strong success, reaching the top 10 on Amazon.com before its release and later becoming a bestseller.
In 2006, Hosseini was named a Goodwill Envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit organisation which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He lives in Northern California.
