"refreshing not because it avoids darkness, but because it dares to let light in"

It was love at first sight for me, or better said, at the first few lines.

No Good Men by Shahrbanoo Sadat announces itself with wit before it unfolds with courage. It is, as its brilliant writer-director defines it, a “political rom-com”, and rarely have those two words felt so earned side by side. In a festival historically associated with heavier, sometimes punishing forms of political cinema, this opening film at the Berlin International Film Festival feels almost rebellious in its lightness. It delivers its message not through despair, but through humor, uplifting, biting, unapologetic humor.

Not all men will get it. Some may miss the sharp pleasure of a frustrated woman’s bitterness when it is finally given space to breathe. But those willing to listen — really listen — will find themselves confronted, educated, and perhaps even disarmed.

Naru (Shahrbanoo Sadat) is 25, a camerawoman for a television channel in Kabul. Smart, sharp-tongued, and visibly done with male nonsense, she hates all men, and with reason. She left her cheating husband and lives with her 3-year-old son at her parents’.

But under Afghan law, the child legally belongs to the father. Even motherhood is conditional. At work she meets Qodrat (Anwar Hashimi), 50 years old, also married. They fall in love.

And here lies the film’s central question: Is Qodrat simply another version of the man who betrayed her? Or is there, somewhere in Afghanistan, such a thing as a good man?

The story is set in Kabul during the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. We have all seen those images on the news: crowds running toward the airport, people clinging to planes, a nation in free fall. But what we have not seen — at least not like this — is the inside view. The view from a newsroom. From a woman holding a camera while her own life is imploding.

The film does not sensationalize the chaos. Instead, it places it alongside intimate battles. History is not background noise, it is a constant intrusion. Love becomes political not because it wants to be, but because everything around it demands it.

And that is where No Good Men succeeds so elegantly. It does not preach. It does not reduce Afghanistan to tragedy. It refuses to portray its heroine as either victim or saint. Naru bends to the rules of her country because she must, but she resists them in every possible way. Her feminism is not theoretical, it is practical, improvised, survivalist.

As an opening film, this choice feels significant. The Berlinale has long embraced political and inclusive cinema, but often through solemnity. Here, politics comes wrapped in romantic tension, sarcasm, and emotional contradiction. The humor does not soften the message, it sharpens it.

This is not a film about “all men are bad.” It is about systems that produce certain versions of masculinity. It is about a woman exhausted by compromise. It is about whether love can exist without ownership.

No Good Men is refreshing not because it avoids darkness, but because it dares to let light in. And for an opening night, that feels exactly right.