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Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

Boring

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

The film Safar e Ghandehar was shown in the U.S. with the title Kandahar (2001). It was written and directed by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.Nelofer Pazira plays Nafas, a woman from Afghanistan who now lives in Canada. She travels to Iran, and then to Afghanistan, to help her sister. (Her sister is terribly depressed, and plans to commit suicide within a few days.) There's a very grim scene in Iran, when children returning to Afghanistan are taught to avoid picking up dolls, because they may be booby-trapped with explosives. Then Nafas crosses into Afghanistan with a group of returning refugees.The remainder of the movie--set in Afghanistan--makes the situation in Iran look idyllic. All the women wear the burqa (burka), so that we can't see them, and they have to see the world through a semi-transparent veil. Lawlessness abounds. Gunmen--I assume they are Taliban--roam the area and operate at will. Most horribly, people with amputated limbs are everywhere. There's a whole culture of amputations and artificial limbs, with more amputations from land mines every day.Nafas makes her way though this dangerous landscape in what is, in essence, a road movie. Although the people she meets are interesting--and sometimes generous and helpful--the situation is so depressing that it's hard to find any comfort while watching the film.This movie gives us a snapshot of what it would be like to be a woman--accustomed to living in North American--who has returned to a very different homeland from the one she left. The director is Iranian, so I don't know how authentically the scenes represent Afghanistan. My guess is that they are authentic, and that they portray a sad and horrible truth.We saw the film on DVD. I think it would work better in a theater. It's a great--if grim--movie, and it's worth seeking out and viewing.(Note that the director of Kandahar, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is the director who is impersonated by the protagonist in the Kiarostami movie Close-Up.)

I amazed with Hindu devotional song used in background.It reminds that all god are same one and only but we pray at differently.I have seen good movie, second to About Elly. Good movie. must watch.It pictured day to day life of Afghan women.It induce lot of inner questions like Dr. in this film.Why should all happen for that people? why they can not like others in this world? Director & lead charter in this story done marvelous work.All charter brings the really in their face.I love background music , really fantastic.

I've probably seen worse movies than Kandahar but none that have garnered such rave reviews. The subject matter is certainly intriguing, as well as the promise of a semi-documentary, semi-fictional story. However Return to Kandahar is simply a bad example of either "genre." This film is simply poorly made and I would caution all to avoid it like a landmine. However if you wish to see it, I will prepare you for what awaits. Terrible actors delivering stilted dialogue repeating arbitrary information ad naseum, a set up that is repeatedly brought up throughout the movie and never delivered upon, and random subtitles, some of which are literally on for less than a 10th of a second. Not because some movies have subtitles that just go too fast for a person to read, but clearly because of sloppy editing that was never cleaned up.It is the setting of this film that people must be raving about. If the same film maker had told a similar story in Canada, about a woman traveling from Toronto to Prince Rupert, and used the same terrible film making, it would not have even made it to the bottom shelf of a 99 cent video store. It's 2001, Afghanistan, where any credibility for this film exists.

You can read all the books and newspaper articles you want, nothing can give you a feeling for life in a repressive theocracy like a well-made film, and Kandahar is that film. Nafas, a woman who fled Afghanistan before the takeover of the Taliban receives a disturbing letter from her sister who was unable to flee with the rest of her family. The sister is so depressed that she has decided to kill herself on the occasion of an upcoming solar eclipse. Nafas decides she must go to Kandahar to find her sister and somehow get her out before it is too late. After flying to Iran, she crosses the border by land into Afghanistan and is immediately faced with the rigors of life under the Taliban. Her annoyance at having to purchase and wear a burka at all times fortells the trying experience she is about to have. Going from one misadventure to another, it is a descent into an absurd hell. The story is compelling, the photography starkly beautiful, and the acting so real that one has the impression of watching a documentary. I would say it is "Survivor" meets the Taliban but Survivor is ultimately about selfishness whereas the protagonist is a paragon of devotion to her sister. The film is based on a true story (except it involved two friends rather than sisters) and was filmed in Iran near the Afghan border before the events of 9/11. I would so much like to see a sequel showing further changes in Afghan society after the overthrow of the Taliban and several years of rebuilding under the Western-backed Karzai government.