Sonia Kronlund (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
86 (length)
15 December 2017 (released)
11 December 2017
Credit where credit is due: for Afghan director Salim Shaheen to have continued making films under the most horrific and difficult circumstances that anyone can imagine, and for French journalist Sonia Kronlund to have gone out to what is essentially still a warzone and made a documentary about him.
The circumstances are remarkable. Shaheen has made over 100 films and at the time of the documentary was making four others. In Afghanistan he’s a national celebrity, mobbed wherever he goes bringing joy to his fans, a larger than life man who hasn’t been put off by anything. Not even after a rocket attack on one of his shoots kills a number of his crew – we see some of the footage and it is horrific.
His films are on made on less than a shoestring but the good will and loyalty of crew and actors, are worth a good deal more. A hands-on director, if something isn’t right he berates and does it himself. Having operated while the Russians and the Taliban were ruling Afghanistan he knows about risk, as we see from a filmed interview with one Taliban decrying virtually all forms of mass communication, though hypocritically happy to use film for their own purposes.
One of the most poignant sequences is when the crew fly to Bamiyan to film and they take a trip to the place where the giant buddhas once stood and were destroyed by the Taliban. The complete senselessness is palpable.
Still even without the Taliban around care needs to be taken in case they portray effeminacy and one of Kronlund’s key questions is where are the women? In many respects the film is a better documentary on contemporary afghan life than Shaheen’s films that are by and large not that good.
There’s insight into the family unit still very male orientated and their customs. There’s the young actress (closely chapereoned by her father) who was hassled at school because of her career choice. Dad isn’t happy either but he’s supportive.
Like Shaheen’s films this is rough and ready filmmaking, even slapdash. It’s carried through by the director’s ebullience and summed up by his pragmatic attitude about landmines near the set, or when going into dangerous areas is that you are going to die sometime.
