Afghan film is worldwide hit

Kandahar is based on a true story

By BBC culture correspondent David Sillito

The film Kandahar struggled to be noticed when it was first unveiled but events since 11 September have turned it in to one of the most topical movies on the planet.

The film is about life under then Taleban in Afghanistan and is becoming a worldwide hit.

It has already broken in to the top ten in Italy and drawn crowds in Canada.

Many newspapers have even reported that President Bush wanted to see it.

Makhmalbaf is very well known in his native Iran

The critics have also been lavish with praise.

The acting may be wooden in parts but given that most of the performers are Afghan refugees, some of whom had never seen a film before, it is a film that shows something that the news bulletins or documentaries cannot convey.

Rarely has a film that was destined for the art house circuit appeared in so many people's 'must see' list.

Suicide

The movie charts the journey to Kandahar of a journalist called Nefas who is trying to save her sister.

The sister has written a letter threatening to commit suicide when the next solar eclipse takes place.

It is based on the true story of the journalist who plays Nefas, Nelofer Pazira.

She tried to save a friend who found herself trapped in Kandahar, the powerbase of the Taleban.

But rather than just being one woman's story it interweaves a series of stories that show us the world beyond the Pentagon briefings and breathless front line news reports.

The audience gets a glimpse of life underneath the burkha, watching women secretly pass round lipsticks and jewellery.

Almost everyone will now have heard of a place called Kandahar but when the film was shown at the Toronto Film Festival , it was decided to use another title because the city meant nothing to film buyers and critics

Armies of amputees race across the desert as false legs are dropped from the air to a Red Cross camp while children are warned of the dangers of landmines buried where they are playing.

The effect is to immerse people in a world of fear, hunger and horrific pointless warfare.

For while the film may appear to be a call to arms to the west to defeat the Taleban its real message is very different.

This is a film in which the enemy is war itself.

Horror

Nelofer Pazira explains that while the Taleban may have closed down all schools for women, the position before was hardly any better with more than 90% of women receiving no education at all.

This is about the day to day horror of a society in which weapons are on street corners and landmines in the fields.

The answer is not to send in more weapons but to find a way of removing them from Afghan life.

Quite how to do that without military force is something left for us to figure out.

But this is a film few would have had a chance to see had not the events of 11 September taken place.

Its release in Britain has coincided with headlines prophesying the fall of Kandahar.

Nilofar Pazira stars in Kandahar

Almost everyone will now have heard of a place called Kandahar but when the film was shown at the Toronto Film Festival , it was decided to use another title because the city meant nothing to film buyers and critics.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran's leading film maker, has a hit on his hands but few are celebrating.

Nelofer Pazira says she is saddened that the only reason the world took notice of the crisis in Afghanistan was because of a terrorist atrocity.

But at least people are getting a chance to see Afghanistan.

Makhmalbaf says the only recent Hollywood movie set in Afghanistan was Rambo 3.

It was filmed entirely in America and featured no Afghans.

This is a society without cinemas, television or newspaper pictures, photographs and painting are considered impure and music is forbidden.

This was a faceless society, known only for a distant never ending war.

Now, with so much appearing on television screens, there is a vision of Afghanistan that does not come through the eyes of a western journalist, that actually features the stories and voices of Afghan people.