"Singing was frowned upon as a profession in traditional Afghanistan," says Saad, "So we wanted to make it more acceptable. We also wanted to ‘home grow' some talent and entertainment."

As sheer entertainment, the warbling Afghan pop songs may not jump to the top of the iTunes charts tomorrow, but most have a foot-tapping rhythm line, as the tabla drums in the soundtrack drive the movie insistently forward. Star's Dari and Pashtun ballads have their roots in classic Persian poetry, usually love songs, many surprisingly sensual. In her final number, Setara belts out an evocative lyric, "The bend of your eyebrow is like the sting of a scorpion" - probably not the favourite line of Taliban chief Mullah Omar in his hidden mountain lair. He could well have been listening. After one competitive round, Lema coyly observes: "I'm a Pashtun and the Taliban are Pashtun too. I'm sure some of them are voting for me."

As in Slumdog, the game show format nicely lends itself to the classical film plot flow of hero begins quest, hero encounters adversity, hero finally triumphs. Marking lets the singers do the talking, acting and singing with just enough superimposed text to clue the viewers into Afghanistan's bloody history without banging them over the head with it. "Viewers are drawn into a compelling story about real people in a real country," says media executive Jason Hirschorn, CEO of Slingblade Media, who was wowed by the première. "The history and the war stuff are introduced gradually and skilfully." Some viewers were taken aback by the opening shot of a blind boy chanting an Afghan melody, but the tone is otherwise light-hearted; the grimmer overtones are folded in later by the visual narrative, not by a narrator.