Afghan street kid heads for the Oscars red carpet

An Afghan street kid is off to Hollywood and the red-carpet treatment at the Oscars - a fairytale ending to a chance encounter that led to a starring role in a movie. Fawad Mohammadi, 14, was selling maps to passing foreigners on Kabul's famed Chicken Street to help feed his family when he met American director Sam French. Now he is preparing for his first flight in an aircraft and his first trip outside war-torn Afghanistan to a glamorous world almost beyond imagination on the grimy streets of Kabul. French cast Mohammadi as one of the main characters in "Buzkashi Boys", a movie shot entirely in Afghanistan and nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the Academy Awards on February 24. The film is about two youngsters growing up in Kabul who dream of becoming Buzkashi horseback riders in Afghanistan's dramatic national sport, which uses a headless goat in place of a ball in a wild version of polo. In the movie, one of the boys is a street kid like Mohammadi, the other the son of a blacksmith forced to spend long hours in his father's dark workshop sharpening axe heads.