(BY ALI NADERZAD) Ever noticed how New York’s streets in movies so closely resemble Toronto’s? It seems similar transmutations have been occurring between Iran and Afghanistan. Whenever Iranian characters are portrayed on screen, it is often by Afghani actors–until now, at least. Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner, slated for release this November, was adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by American-Afghani novelist Khaled Hosseini and includes a cast of Iranians playing Afghanis. Kite Runner follows two childhood friends as they negotiate the pressures of growing up with the human dislocation caused by war. Amir is the son of a Pashtun merchant (Pashtuns controlled Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion) and lives on a posh corner of Kabul. He befriends Hasan, an illiterate boy from an ethnic minority group. Everything goes afield once Amir betrays his friend. They separate and Amir emigrates to California, marked by the event which would haunt him for the next twenty years. He returns to Afghanistan after a lifetime of living abroad to reconnect with his past. Kite Runner has been a major best-selling book: epic storytelling is always in fashion and ethnic parts of the world always seem to stir up never-ending fascination in audiences. Whether Kite the movie will make just as much of a splash as the book remains to be seen. Kite Runner is out today