Kandahar (film)

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Kandahar

Directed by	Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Produced by	Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Written by	Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Starring	Nelofer Pazira Hassan Tantai Sadou Teymouri Hoyatala Hakimi
Music by	Mohammad Reza Darvishi
Cinematography	Ebrahim Ghafori
Editing by	Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Distributed by	Avatar Films
Release date(s)	2001
Running time	85 min.
Country	Iran/France
Language	Persian/English/Pashtu/Polish
IMDb profile

Kandahar (alternatively titled Safar e Ghandehar and The Sun Behind the Moon) is a 2001 film by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, set in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. The film tells the story (partly true, partly fictionalized) of a successful Afghan refugee (played by Nelofer Pazira) in Canada who returns to Afghanistan after receiving a letter from her sister, who was left behind when the family escaped, that she plans on committing suicide on the last solar eclipse of the millennium.

Kandahar was filmed mostly in Iran, but also secretly in Afghanistan itself. Most people, including Nelofer Pazira, played themselves. The film premiered at the Cannes film festival of 2001, but didn't get much attention at first. After 9/11 however Afghanistan came into picture, and Kandahar appeared to be the only movie about the Taliban. U.S. president Bush also wanted to see the film.

Kandahar won Makhmalbaf the Federico Fellini Prize from Unesco in 2001.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Hidden behind a burka, Nafas, the sister from Canada, makes her way across the border with a family of refugees. When they are robbed by brigands and the family turns back, she decides to continue on her way, accompanied first by a young boy who was just expelled from a Qur'anic school, and then by an African American convert to Islam, who has become disillusioned with the turn the country has taken under the Taliban.

As the film proceeds, Nafas learns more and more about the hardships women face under the Taliban, and even more so, how years of war have destroyed Afghan society. Her African American guide, hidden behind a false beard, points out to her that the only technological progress allowed in the country is weaponry. As they wander the countryside, Nafas records her impressions into a portable tape recorder hidden beneath her veils. She sees children robbing corpses to survive, people fighting over artificial limbs that they might need in case they walk through a minefield, and doctors who examine female patients from behind a curtain with a hole in it.

Nafas never reaches her sister. When her African American guide turns back, because he is afraid to enter the city of Kandahar, she follows a guide who had just scammed a pair of artificial legs out of the Red Cross. Dressed in burkas, the pair join a wedding party which is stopped by the Taliban because they are playing musical instruments and singing--forbidden by Afghan law. Her guide is taken away and she is unveiled. Captured, she seems destined to fall into the same kind of life that she hoped to help her sister escape.