Another look at Kandahar - Iranian filmmaker shows modern Afghanistan in its raw form

Given the events of recent months, the latest offering in Middle-Eastern film-making, Kandahar, could not have come at a better time. What with all the negative press that Afghanistan has been receiving, Iranian writer and director Mohsen Makhmalbaf portrays the country in all its primitive beauty and tragedy. A fictionalized documentary, Kandahar chronicles the travels of Nafas (Niloufar Pazira), an Afghani woman who has been living in Canada since childhood after her family fled Afghanistan. Years later, Nafas returns to the Middle East to find her sister, who was left behind and now living in Kandahar.

As Nafas makes her way from Iran to Afghanistan, she records her observations of and reflections on the country, now torn apart by Taliban rule, her words directed principally toward her sister. A sense of apprehension infuses the film throughout, not only because of the evidence of Taliban violence and oppression visible everywhere, but also because Nafas must make it to Kandahar in three days with nearly no resources except her own strength and some American money: Her sister, who lost her legs in a land mine explosion as a child has vowed to commit suicide on the upcoming eclipse, and Nafas is determined to stop her.

Nafas begins her journey posing as one of the wives of an older Iranian man traveling to Kandahar via caravan. From the beginning, the burqa (the heavy veil many Muslim women are required to wear) emerges as a symbol of oppression in the Middle East, for women in particular. There is a poignant scene toward the beginning of the film in which a photographer is taking portraits of a number of Muslim families; each family includes several wives, all of whom are completely masked by their burqas, their identities hidden, causing us to wonder why they bother to photograph them at all. Nafas, too, must wear the heavy covering to assimilate herself into the culture. Along the way, the caravan is accosted and most of the family's possessions, including their vehicle, is taken from them. We become immediately aware of Afghanistan's tenuous political and social situation, in which danger awaits around every turn and people must often steal and deceive to keep themselves alive.

The Iranians decide to return to their own country, and Nafas continues on foot in the company of Khak (Sadou Teymouri), a young Afghani boy who offers to be her guide. Khak has recently been kicked out of school for failing to learn the Islamic religious scriptures properly; he is full of energy, defiant and, like any of his peers, eager to make money. Nafas becomes sick from drinking unclean water in the desert and ends up at the dwelling of Tabib Sahid (Hassan Tantai), a medicine man. After hearing her story, Tabib offers to help Nafas find a way to Kandahar, and so obstacle-fraught journey resumes.

One of the most notable aspects of Kandahar is Makhmalbaf's use of surrealism to express the state of pain in which Afghanistan remains. One of the earliest scenes depicts a group of little girls learning to avoid land mines under the guidance of adults, who use dolls as symbolic bombs. Later on, when Nafas' caravan stops for a break, the women and little girls take out a collection of make-up, paint their nails and put on lipstick, despite the fact that it will be completely invisible beneath their burqas - it is as if they are trying hopelessly to validate their femininity.

Perhaps the most touching scene, however, is when a group of Afghani men at a Red Cross camp, all missing one or both legs, race lamely toward a distant field where prosthetic legs pour from the sky on parachutes. We see this through the eyes of Nafas, who bears the unique identity of being both a native and yet removed from her country, like we are. Despite later plot discrepancies and some stilted acting, Kandahar is a tightly executed work of unsettling beauty, yet another effort in bringing us closer to political reality through art.