|
Kandahar
During the first week of last September, at the Toronto Film Festival, this
film was still being referred to by an alternative title — The Sun
Behind the Moon — because it was thought few Westerners would have
any interest in a movie named for an obscure Afghan city. Times changed (to
put it mildly), and so did both the title and fortunes of this previously
low-profile film: Kandahar became "must-see" at festivals around a
world for which Afghanistan, and that no-longer obscure city, became —
at least for a moment — the very center. Yet the problems of
Afghanistan, its wars and refugees, have long been a feature of everyday life
in neighborhing Iran. Filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf, in fact, examined refugee
desperation in his earlier film, The Cyclist. This film takes the
viewer into the heart of Afghanistan, following the journey of an expatriate
journalist who returns home to search among the Taliban for her sister, who
is in the midst of a personal crisis. It could be said that all the women in
Afghanistan have been in personal crisis for some time: the old title for the
film refers to the faces of Afghani women, hidden behind Burkas and
systematic oppression by the regime that garb represents. Kandahar
received a number of awards, including the United Nation's annual Fellini
Award — appropriate for a director whose often Felliniesque imagery
makes unforgettable a story that would have been compelling with or without
being dragged tragically into the headlines.
|
