Source: Some information on this page may have been sourced as part of the 2023 Wikimedia Australia Partnership Projects grant, with the purpose of improving and expanding the use of Wikidata on our website. Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Read more about this project here.
An Afghani refugee living in Canada, Nafas (played by Nelofer Pazira), receives a letter from her sister in Kandahar informing her that due to the patriarchal fundamentalism of the Taliban, the sister will suicide before the next eclipse. Nafas flies to the Afghani-Iran border and then begins a difficult and dangerous journey across the war-ravaged country to the city of Kandahar. On arriving at the border she has to put on the burkha, which symbolises the oppression of women she has sought to escape but which also allows her to disappear and to evade the gaze of the Taliban as she undertakes her search. Makhmalbaf’s film, made before the terrorist bombing on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, is a deeply moving indictment of war. He achieves this by creating distinct poetic episodes around the central story: a young boy whose family and village has been destroyed in the war tries to combat his illiteracy and stay on at the Qu’ranic school which is his only hope of survival; refugee workers on the Afghani-Iran border attempt to teach children how to avoid land mines; an African-American exile wanted for terrorism in the USA attempts to be a doctor to a devastated village; and Red Crescent workers in the inhospitable centre of Afghanistan attempt to make surreal decisions on which lives are worth saving. Nafas’s search is itself loosely based on Pazira’s own experiences and the greatest sequences in “Kandahar” achieve their hallucinatory power by combining poetry and documentary realism. As we see what seems to be an army of land mine victims rush, crawl and hop across the desert to grab at prosthetic limbs that UN helicopters drop from the skies, we are aware that we are witnessing horrors and savagery that remain, in words, indescribable. Often “Kandahar” shows the limitations of being filmed in hazardous, difficult circumstances: the acting is not always consistent, some scenes are truncated and ragged. But Nafas’s story and her journey is never less than absorbing. And the film itself is never just a catalogue of horrors. Makhmalbaf’s intentions are proudly humanist and political and we are never in doubt of his intellect and integrity. This is a great anti-war film. Winner of the Ecumenical Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 2001.
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
How to watch
Stream, rent or buy via
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
317281
Language
Persian
Audience classification
PG
Subject categories
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Film festivals - France - Cannes - Awards
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Foreign language films
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Afghanistan
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Muslim women - Afghanistan
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → Islam and politics - Afghanistan
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → Land mines
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → War
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → War victims
Armed Forces, Military, War & Weapons → Women in war
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Islam and politics - Afghanistan
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Islamic fundamentalism - Afghanistan
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Muslim women - Afghanistan
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Red Cross
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Taliban
Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Brothers and sisters
Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Muslim women - Afghanistan
Feature films → Feature films - Iran
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Red Cross
History → Afghanistan - History - 1989-
History → Islam and politics - Afghanistan
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)
MOV file ProRes4444; Digital Preservation Master - overscan
MPEG-4 Digital File; ACMI Digital Access Copy - overscan