Afghanistan

  • Hassan Fazili – Midnight Traveler (2019)

    2011-2020AfghanistanDocumentaryHassan Fazili

    In 2015, the Taliban put a price on the head of Hassan, a filmmaker, who was forced to flee Afghanistan with his wife and two young daughters. Using their camera phones, the fugitives show first-hand the many dangers refugees face when seeking asylum in a safe place.Read More »

  • Hana Makhmalbaf – Lezate divanegi AKA Joy of Madness (2003)

    2001-2010AfghanistanDocumentaryHana MakhmalbafPolitics

    Quote:
    Shot on a digital video camera by the then 14-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf, Joy Of Madness is, in the words of its precociously talented young director, “a documentary on the surface but a feature film in essence.”
    Partly it’s an idiosyncratic account of Hana’s elder sister Samira attempting to cast her own film, At Five In The Afternoon, with non-professionals in war-scarred Kabul in autumn 2002. It’s also a revealing portrait of a shattered society still traumatised by its experiences under the terrifying rule of the Taliban.Read More »

  • Margaux Benn, Solène Chalvon-Fioriti – Afghanistan: Vivre en pays Taliban AKA Afghanistan: Willkommen bei den Taliban AKA Afghanistan: The Land of the Taliban (2021)

    2021-2030AfghanistanDocumentaryMargaux BennSolène Chalvon-FioritiTV

    ARTE wrote:
    Afghan security forces are non-existent, a president has fled to Tajikistan, and the fundamentalists have settled in an empty place.

    Last May, when the Taliban were already in control of a large part of the country, our filmmakers followed the “masters of the countryside” on their land, whose public stonings had struck fear into the hearts of the whole world.

    Twenty years after being driven out of power by the American military intervention, the Taliban entered Kabul, without resistance, to the astonishment of the international community.
    With Afghan security forces non-existent and a president on the run in Tajikistan, the fundamentalists have settled into an empty place.Read More »

  • Atiq Rahimi – Syngué sabour, pierre de patience AKA The Patience Stone (2012)

    Atiq Rahimi2011-2020AfghanistanDramaWar

    Quote:
    In a war ridden country a woman watches over the husband reduced to a vegetable state by a bullet in the neck, abandoned by Jihad companions and brothers. One day, the woman decides to say things to him she could never have done before.Read More »

  • George Gittoes – Tailor Story (2011)

    2011-2020ActionAfghanistanDramaGeorge Gittoes

    “Gittoes’s work often asks two questions: what are the experiences of other artists working and surviving in war zones? Or, what is his moral responsibility as an artist-correspondent? When Gittoes allows his subjects to explain the former, or, when he talks about his own experience of the latter, his work is clear and insightful.Read More »

  • Atiq Rahimi – Syngué sabour, pierre de patience AKA The Patience Stone (2012)

    2011-2020AfghanistanAtiq RahimiDramaWar

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    Somewhere, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, in a country torn apart by a war… A young woman in her thirties watches over her older husband in a decrepit room. He is reduced to the state of a vegetable because of a bullet in the neck. Not only is he abandoned by his companions of the Jihad, but also by his brothers. One day, the woman decides to tell the truth to him about her feelings about their relationship to her silent husband. She talks about her childhood, her suffering, her frustrations, her loneliness, her dreams, her desires… She says things she could never have done before, even though they have been married for the past 10 years. Therefore, this paralyzed man unconsciously becomes syngue sabour, a magic stone which, according to Persian mythology, when placed in front of a person shields her from unhappiness, suffering, pains and miseries. In this wait for her husband to come back to life, the woman struggles to survive and live. She finds refuge in her aunt’s place, who is…Read More »

  • Siddiq Barmak – Osama (2003)

    2001-2010AfghanistanDramaSiddiq Barmak

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The movies are a little more than a century old. Imagine if we could see films from previous centuries — records of slavery, the Great Fire of London, the Black Plague. “Osama” is like a film from some long-ago age. Although it takes place in Afghanistan, it documents practices so cruel that it is hard to believe such ideas have currency in the modern world. What it shows is that, under the iron hand of the Taliban, the excuse of “respect” for women was used to condemn them to a lifetime of inhuman physical and psychic torture. No society that loves and respects women could treat them in this way.Read More »

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