Trip to Kandahar
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Trip to Kandahar |
| Original title | Safar e Ghandehar |
| Country of production |
Iran France |
| original language |
Persian English |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 6 JMK unrestricted |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mohsen Makhmalbaf |
| script | Mohsen Makhmalbaf |
| production | Mohsen Makhmalbaf |
| music | Mohammad Reza Darvishi |
| camera | Ebrahim Ghafori |
| cut | Mohsen Makhmalbaf |
| occupation | |
| |
Journey to Kandahar - English Film Title Kandahar - ( Persian ﺳﻔﺮ قندهار) Is a film drama by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf from the year 2001 . It takes place in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime.
action
The journalist Nafas fled her native Afghanistan at the age of 16 and has lived in Canada ever since . In the summer of 1999 she received a letter from her sister who once lost both legs in a mine explosion and is still living in Afghanistan. Since she can no longer bear her fate, she tells Nafas that she will commit suicide during the last solar eclipse of the 20th century .
Nafas decides to travel to Kandahar to see her sister in order to dissuade her from her plans. She records her thoughts on a tape recorder during the dangerous journey. Nafas first joins an Afghan family in order to be able to enter Afghanistan via Iran . According to the rules of the fundamentalist Taliban government, she wears a burqa that completely covers her body. When the tour group is attacked by robbers in the desert, the family decides to turn back; Nafas is left alone. In a cemetery she meets the young Koran student Khak, who wants to take her to Kandahar for 50 US dollars .
When Nafas fell ill on the way, she went to see a doctor in a town. This turns out to be an American emigrant named Tabib Sahid, who went to Afghanistan to find God. He advises Nafas to send the boy away, as the locals cannot be trusted, and offers himself as a companion. Tabib drives Nafas to a Red Cross station that distributes prosthetic legs to mine victims. There he hands the young woman over to the Afghan Hayat, who is supposed to bring her to her destination. The two join a wedding party that goes singing through the desert. When the Taliban inspects him, Nafas is captured. She can no longer help her sister.
The film shows the difficult everyday life in Afghanistan in 2001, which is characterized by illness, violence and war-like conditions. The main character Nafas feels firsthand how women in particular are oppressed by the Taliban.
background
The plot of the film is based on a true story. One day, director and screenwriter Mohsen Makhmalbaf received a visit from an Afghan woman who had fled to Canada and who had now learned that her friend was killing herself. The woman asked the director to accompany her on her trip to Kandahar, but the director refused. Most of the other characters are also based on real people, according to a statement by Makhmalbaf.
The trip to Kandahar was filmed mainly in the Iranian-Afghan border area. Individual scenes were shot in the Afghan desert, but without the permission of the Taliban. The actors were all amateur actors. Nelofer Pazira, who played the lead role, had also fled Afghanistan to Canada as a child. Tabib Sahid was played by Dawud Salahuddin, who murdered the Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar Tabatabai in 1980. Like his film character, Salahuddin is from the United States and later converted to Islam.
The film premiered on May 11, 2001 at the Cannes International Film Festival , but received little attention there. A journalist is said to have even asked Makhmalbaf why he hadn't chosen a more important topic for his film. It was only after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that the trip to Kandahar found a wider audience.
In 2003 Nelofer Pazira made the documentary Return to Kandahar .
criticism
- Lexicon of international film : “The film is the first fictional work to describe the repressive conditions under the radical Islamic Taliban regime in the form of a travel diary in a factual, but haunting and captivating manner. The closeness to the real conditions is visible at all times and actually achieved through the cast with authentic characters. "
Awards
Cannes International Film Festival 2001
- Ecumenical Jury Prize for Mohsen Makhmalbaf
- Nomination for the Golden Palm
European Film Award 2001
- Nomination in the category Best Non-European Film
National Board of Review Awards 2001
- Freedom of Expression Award
Thessaloniki Film Festival 2001
- FIPRESCI Prize for Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid 2001
- Nomination for the Golden Ear
Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani 2002
- Nomination for the Nastro d'Argento in the category Best Director of a Foreign Language Film for Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Political Film Society Awards 2003
- Nomination in the Exposé category
See also
Sources, references and comments
- Christopher de Bellaigue: In the rose garden of the martyrs. A portrait of Iran. From the English by Sigrid Langhaeuser, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006 (English original edition: London 2004), pp. 317–329
- ↑ born as David Theodore Belfield; before conversion to Sunni Islam (1969): Hassan Abdolrahman
- ↑ Press booklet: Interview with Mohsen Makhmalbaf
- ↑ Cineclub.de
- ↑ Filmrezension.de
- ↑ Journey to Kandahar. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 28, 2017 .
Web links
- Kandahar in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Review on filmzentrale.com (first published in taz )