KANDAHAR

Iran, 2001, 85 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Kandahar is a moving Iranian film whose subject is Afghanistan in the '90s and the beginning of the 21st century. The film focuses on a young woman who had escaped from Afghanistan through Iran when a child and had settled in Canada. She receives a letter from her sister, desperate in Kandahar, threatening to commit suicide during the last eclipse of the 21st century. Her sister travels to Iran, smuggles herself into Afghanistan in an attempt to reach her sister. The film has extraordinary use of Iranian and Afghan desert locations. The country is absolutely forbidding.

The film also shows an Iranian perspective on the Afghan wars of the '90s. There is no right or wrong, an internecine struggle which leaves refugees and people dead in the desert. Anyone that one passes on the track could be police, United Nations, Red Cross or bandits. Many of the bandits prevail, robbing even the women and children.

The film shows young women and girls on the Afghan border, wanting to return, but being warned that there will be no schooling for them there. They are also being trained not to go near mines which have maimed so many Afghans. Disguised as the wife of an Afghan, the woman (with a tape recorder recording her thoughts in a letter to her sister) travels in the caravan, is set on by bandits, is guided by a young boy who is extortionate, even trying to sell a ring salvaged from a skeleton. She becomes ill after drinking well water and is helped by a doctor, who turns out to be an African American who had gone in search for God to Afghanistan, fought on each side and has decided that healing is best. Finally, guards stop a marriage train in which the woman has disguised herself as a cousin of the bride. She is about to be discovered, and her tape recorder, when the film ends.

The semi-documentary style and the evident preaching to the audience about the situation in Afghanistan is fully acceptable given the horrors experienced in that land.

1. An example of the flourishing Iranian film industry? Iranian perspectives on Afghanistan, its wars, its religious traditions, social conditions?

2. The Iranian and Afghan locations, the mountains and the deserts, inhospitable? The people in the desert, travelling, refugees, people lying dead, those maimed by the mines, the women in colourful dress yet absolutely concealing themselves? The macho stands of the men? (The men watching the cockfights in the desert?) The possibility of doing good, Russian Red Cross workers, the United Nations, the American doctor? The theme for survival and hope? The background music and songs, from the Koran, the religious traditions?

3. The title: the film as a road movie, the woman in search of her sister, on the road, Kandahar as a physical and symbolic destination? Her not reaching it?

4. The portrait of the sister: the introduction, her comments about being imprisoned? Her own escape as a child, her father, leaving the sister behind? Travelling to Canada, her education, having sufficient means? Receiving the letter from her sister, coming back to Iran? The tape recording of her travels? Her demands, the sense of urgency, wanting to save her sister?

5. The stages of the journey: her having to disguise herself and the issue of women covering themselves (and the film's strong stances on this tradition not being helpful and suppressing women)? The girls on the Iranian border, going back, not being able to be educated? The lessons about the mines? Travelling with the UN protection? The bandits and the robbing of the women and especially the children? Her continuing as the fourth wife of the Iranian man, all his money having been taken, his having to turn back and leave her? Her travelling to the school where the boys were learning to sing the Koran, the boy who hadn't learnt his lessons and couldn't sing, his being ousted, the mother with the boy going in? The woman being guided by the boy, his wanting the money, taking the ring from the skeleton, her refusal to buy it? Taping him singing? His self-consciousness? Drinking the well water, her illness? The doctor, his background of searching for God, fighting, searching for God in healing people? The diagnosis of the woman (and the interpretation by the daughter)? His saying that they needed a baker to help them have bread? The heroine going to see him, her illness, his diagnosis? Their discussions in English, his warning against the boy? His travelling with her? Finding the man who wanted to get the artificial limbs for his mother? Finding the Red Cross centre in the desert, the two Russian women and their service of others? The haggling by the man for better artificial limbs? The maimed men, their pain? The bargain with the man? Their taking him as guide?

6. The confrontation with the guards, the man disguised as a woman and his being saved? The heroine and her being warned to hide the tape recorder, her being interrogated - and the film ending with her comment about being in prison?

7. A portrait of Afghanistan, its wars, its suffering, poverty and needs? The helplessness to help the Afghans? The perspective from Iran and the woman coming from the West? The perspective of the doctor? How much hopelessness, hope?