The Breadwinner: contexts and key sequences — Eduqas GCSE Film Studies C670
Eduqas GCSE Film Studies · C670
The Breadwinner: contexts and key sequences
The Breadwinner
What you need to know
The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey, 2017): in Kabul under Taliban rule, eleven-year-old Parvana's father is arrested; because women may not go out alone, she cuts her hair and dresses as a boy to earn money for her family, while telling a story about a boy who fights the Elephant King.
An animated film from the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, adapted from Deborah Ellis's novel, with Angelina Jolie as an executive producer.
Life for women and girls under the Taliban, and animation as a way to tell stories of war.
Key sequences to know in detail: the opening in the market, Parvana cutting her hair, and the end of the story as she reaches the prison.
Cinematography and mise-en-scène: Kabul drawn in browns, sand colours and greys against the bright cut-out paper style of the story, and camera angles used as in live action.
Editing and sound: cross-cutting between the two worlds, dissolves, and music that evokes the setting.
The few short lines of dialogue that matter most in these sequences, a few words each.
Short answers of the kind the first parts of the Section A question ask for: naming and describing a setting, character or moment, and explaining a choice.
How to answer each part: the marks, and what the short identify and explain parts need as well as the extended answer, since naming a technique instead of a specific example from the film loses marks there. Practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
Quote only short lines of dialogue you're sure of, a few words at a time, and base every point on what happens in the finished film.
