Zibo Breitman’s and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec’s “The Swallows of Kabul” animation was produced involving the adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s literary fiction. The duration is 81 minutes. This 2D, graphically rich, watercolor-style animation tells about how people of Kabul live under Taliban control. The base of the story are two couples who try to survive on their own way. At the same time the couples had similarities and differences. Main roles are historian Mohsen and his wife artist Zunaira who still try to live with their hopes and dreams in their lovely homeland being against the new system. Atiq’s and his wife’s Mussarat’s life was like already ended. In the animation we can see variety of important topics like war, women rights, humanism and the struggle we do in our everyday lives. The main ideas are to fight for children and future generations and that even a small amount of hope can make a human feel like human. In every second of the animation we can feel thousands of emotions and feelings about which we cannot keep silence and move on. One of the touching and sobering moments is when the playground of the children was the exact place where women were sentenced to death because of braking the law and the pitch was the pole where they were being choke to death. And the enthusiasm of Mohsen and Zunaira who were trying to find a small glimpse of light in the darkness to illuminate the younger generations and how one free and independent soul Zunaira could soften the Atiqs heart which was stoned year by year, by giving him the hope and humanism. I also want to mention technical part of the animation. For me, If the animation wasn’t made in watercolor-style it couldn’t show us all the drama and realism. To make the sound and scenes more real voice actors has acted it like the actors do on the stage. Women have worn hijabs, men have worn clothes that are specific to Muslims. And that’s what gave heart and soul to the animation. Atiq was voiced by french-armenian famous actor Simon Abkarian. All the animation characters are outwardly similar to their voice actors. All that we see they had lived and fully, unconditionally and sincerely sent it to us. The animation wouldn’t be complete without the Persian song called “King of hearts”, which was wrote in 1968. It’s like the merge and burst of all the emotions we have collected during the animation. Details, shadows, landscapes are made so thoughtfully and make all the atmosphere. The meaning and depth of the animation is huge and all of us can understand it in different ways. We can watch this animation as the reminder of humanism, to face the reality that we have in many countries near us which give innocent victims every day. Also I want to add that it would be better to be watched by matures who have their own worldview.    Liana Tourian