The film starts in contemporary San Francisco, where an adult Amir looks on morosely at children playing in a park. He's a successful and happily married author, but the title of his book, "A Season for Ashes," proves that fun is not his middle name. A phone call from an old friend brings Amir back to his past, and we immediately flash back a dozen years to a life in Afghanistan that he would like to forget.

The movie's Kabul is a vivid place, especially in the sequences where the city's boys engage in kite-fighting tournaments, in which kites with glass-coated strings fill the skies and attempt to cut each other's lines. Partners in kite-flying and best pals in life are 12-year-olds Amir (Zekiria Ebrahimi) and Hassan (the irresistible Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada).

Hassan is the runner of the title, and he has an uncanny ability to run to exactly where the last kite cut down will hit the ground. In many ways, however, these friends are not equals: Hassan is of the minority Hazara tribe and his father is the servant of Amir's charismatic Pashtun father Baba.

Eventually, a truly dreadful situation develops and Amir feels, with reason, that he has let Hassan down.