Buzkashi - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Buzkashi is portrayed in several books, both fiction and nonfiction. It is shown in Steve Berry's book The Venetian Betrayal, and it is briefly mentioned in the Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner. Buzkashi was the subject of a book called Horsemen of Afghanistan by French photojournalists Roland and Sabrina Michaud. Gino Strada wrote a book named after the sport (with the spelling Buskashì) in which he tells about his life as surgeon in Kabul in the days after the 9-11 strikes. P.J. O'Rourke also mentions the game in discussions about Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Foreign Policy section of Parliament of Whores, and Rory Stewart devotes a few sentences to it in "The Places in Between".

Two books have been written about Buzkashi which were later turned into films. The game is the core and subject of a novel by French novelist Joseph Kessel titled Les Cavaliers (aka Horsemen) as well as of the film The Horseman (1971), which was directed by John Frankenheimer with Omar Sharif in the lead role. This film shows Afghanistan and its people the way they were before the wars that wracked the country, particularly their love for the sport of buzkashi.

The game is also a key element in the book Caravans by James Michener and the film of the same name (1978) starring Anthony Quinn. A scene from the film featuring the king of Afghanistan watching a game included the real-life king at the time, Mohammed Zahir Shah. The whole sequence of the game being witnessed by the king was filmed on the Kabul Golf Course, where the national championships were played at the time the film was made.

A number of films also reference the game. In Rambo III (1988), directed by Peter MacDonald, John Rambo (played by Sylvester Stallone) was shown in a sequence playing Buzkashi with his mujahideen friends when suddenly they were attacked by Russians. The Tom Selleck film High Road to China (1983) features a spirited game of buzkashi. Buzkashi is described at length in Episode 2, "The Harvest of the Seasons", of the documentary The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. It is put in the context of the development, by the Mongols, of warfare using the horse and its effect on agricultural settlements. The film includes several scenes from a game in Afghanistan. The opening scenes of the Indian film Khuda Gawah (1992), which was filmed in Afghanistan and India, show actors Amitabh Bachchan and Sridevi engaged in the game. The game is mentioned briefly in John Huston's film The Man Who Would Be King (1975), the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) during advertisements for the fictional ESPN 8 (El Ocho) television channel, and the Bollywood movie Kabul Express (2006). Composer Scott Fields recorded a track called Buzkashi on the Clean Feed Records guitar compilation "I Never Meta Guitar" (2010).

The 2012 joint international-Afghan short film Buzkashi Boys depicts a fictional story centered around the game, and has won awards at several international film festivals.