Return to Kandahar

In celebrated Iranian writer-director Moshen Makhmalbaf's 2000 feature film Kandahar (VL-5/03), Afghan expatriate Nelofer Pazira starred as Nafas, a Canadian journalist who had left Afghanistan with her family as a child but was now returning--in secret--to the Taliban-controlled country to search for her sister, left behind after a landmine destroyed her legs. The script was inspired by Pazira's own background--she had long wanted to contact a despairing friend named Dyana who had remained in Afghanistan, and whose letters had stopped altogether. Now, Pazira and filmmaker Paul Jay have collaborated on Return to Kandahar, a documentary recording her return to the now-liberated Afghanistan to locate Dyana in a search that takes her to her childhood neighborhood in Kabul, as well as Kandahar, and Masir-e-Sharif, where she searches for Dyana's family among the thousands of refugees who fled northward during the years of civil war and oppression (the outcome is a tragic one that can serve as a kind of epitaph for the country as a whole). Detailing a fascinating and powerful personal story, the film is also important in its revelations about present-day Afghanistan from the perspective of ordinary, still-suffering people rather than powerbrokers; their complaint that the removal of the Taliban has returned control to militaristic warlords is one that American viewers might especially take to heart. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)