Arquivo

In September, 1996, after ten years of war with the ex-Soviet Union, Afghanistan entered a period of obscurity bewildering to the rest of the world, even today. The radical Taleban Islamic militia assumed power over a great deal of the territory in the country and instituted a brutal regime of censorship and repression. Music, photography, painting, and any reproduction of the likeness of man were all of them forbidden. The objective of the militia was to create a new man, free of western dogma and idolatry. The women were obliged to wear a burga, a dark tunic that covers them from head to foot, and they lost all and any type of freedom. Iranian film maker Makhmalbaf has decided to tell the story of one of these. Nafas is an Afghan journalist, and a refugee in Canada, but who decides to return to her native country after she receives a letter from her younger sister where she swears she will commit suicide at the next eclipse of the sun, for she can no longer stand the repression to the women in the country. The Road to Kandahar was filmed in Afghanistan itself. The movie received in October the golden medal Fellini, given by Unesco.