No Good Men (2026)
No Good Men, Shahrbanoo Sadat's Kabul-set romance, is the kind of film I can see clearly for what it is, nod along to, and still walk away from feeling a little underwhelmed. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival, and while there is plenty to respect in its subject and its moment, it never quite rose above fine for me. Three stars.
Set in 2021, in the city's last stretch of freedom before the Taliban's return, it follows Naru, the only camerawoman at Kabul's main TV station, who is fighting to keep custody of her three-year-old son after walking out on a husband who has cheated on her again and again. Worn down and convinced there is not a single good man left in her country, she is caught off guard when Qodrat, the station's star journalist, hands her a career opportunity, and the two begin crisscrossing the city reporting on its final free days.
The backdrop is genuinely charged, an embattled woman trying to hold her life and her child together as the walls close in, and when the film leans on that it has real weight. The problem, for me, is the romance. Naru and Qodrat are far better as friends and colleagues than they ever are as a couple, and I almost wish the film had left the love story out entirely. As it stands it tips into the sort of narrative where the heroine's whole arc seems to exist to arrive at a man, so that a sharp, capable woman ends up framed chiefly as the prize at the end of someone's pursuit, which rather undercuts everything else the film has going for it.
It does not help that the acting is fairly flat throughout, and the overall effect edges closer to a glossy made-for-television romance than the urgent, grounded drama the setting seems to be calling for. You can feel the weight of its many funding bodies and grants in the slightly safe, boxes-ticked finish, a film assembled with care and good intentions that never quite catches fire.
Three stars. There is a worthwhile story in here about women's lives in Afghanistan on the brink, and the real-world stakes give it a pull that carries you through, but the wan central romance and the soft, Hallmark-ish execution keep it stuck at perfectly watchable. I understood what it was going for, and I just wish it had trusted its heroine to be more than someone's happy ending.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from Country Afghanistan: The White Diamond (2004), Osama (2003), Three Songs for Benazir (2021)
More from the 2020s: All That's Left of You (2025), The Whale (2022), Look Back (2024)
More drama: I Will Be Alright (2026), White Musk (2026), FarEye (2026)
