Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Viaggio a Kandahar (2001)

Flocks of children, running happily towards a new leg.

Journey to Kandahar could be narrated like this, or to somewhat refer to the plot:

"Nafas is a young Afghan woman, who fled her country during the Taliban civil war and found refuge in Canada, where she works as a journalist engaged in social issues and advocating for women's rights. She receives a desperate letter from her younger sister, who is without legs and remained at home in Afghanistan, in which she communicates her intention to take her own life. Nafas decides to return to Afghanistan to save her sister."

But discussing the actors or the director here is not something that excites me; rather, I would try to express the sense of anguish that grips me with such a film, like a knot in the stomach that forces us to watch and suffer, imagining what would have become of us if we had been born on the wrong side of the world.

Waking up in the morning and disgusted with being still alive, well-fed, with all limbs in their place, realizing that the only problem in life is "where to go dancing, who to call" of cicicipiana memory.

It's too easy to deceive oneself that the war has remained "on the other radio," that we are all exempt from it; we are all involved.

Those faces with black eyes remain, like pinpoints thrust into the heart. Then you try to inform yourself, you find a thousand books that speak about the new wars, turn off the radio, abolish the news, tear up the newspapers, attempt a new path for your information.

You talk with people, gather information from those from the other side of the world, ask about life where the war is endless, clench your fists, tired of waking at night thinking "how nice it would be if I had a bit of good fortune." As if good fortune is merely hitting the jackpot...

Then you reach out your hand, she is always next to you, you get up slowly, open the door to the children's room, they sleep softly, you tuck in their sheets and gently caress their foreheads. Everything is fine, what are you complaining about?

I cannot become a "sanyasin", a renunciate. How could I dress in orange and live on alms, wandering from city to city? How could I in this society so full of its ego?

In the garden

randomly I gathered

grapes and pieces of bombs.

(Tiziano Terzani)

Journey to Kandahar

2001

Directed by: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Cast: Niloufar Pazira, Hassan Tantaï, Sadou Teymouri, Hayatalah Hakimi