Filming of The Kite Runner, NYT:
In addition to keen eyes Ms. Dowd needed extraordinary patience. She spoke, for example, of having to drink 45 cups of tea with the director of one French-run school in Kabul before the director trusted her enough to let her tour his 25 classrooms. He then granted her all of three mornings to complete her search.
On her ninth classroom, running out of tricks, she asked the students who was the naughtiest kid in class. “There was one child who stood out as the most extroverted, but right next to him there was another boy who was quiet, but who was responding to the scene,” said Ms. Dowd, speaking of an 11-year-old named Kekiria Ebrahimi. “There was a special little moment of energy from him, and it stayed with me. He ended up playing Amir.”
A precociously witty 10-year-old, Ahmad Khan Mahmiidzada, plays the role of Hassan, the servant boy who is betrayed by his best friend, Amir. The boys did not know each other before being brought to western China for the filming, but off camera they became close. And while there is no confusing reality and fiction for either, at a fundamental level the story in which they are acting rubs against the grain of their friendship and seems to trouble them.
Here.