“EXTRAORDINARY_”

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             “EXTRAORDINARY!”                             A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES

             “LOVELY AND TERRIFYING!”
                                                           Richard Shickel, TIME MAGAZINE




                       WINNER                                               OFFICIAL SELECTION                                            NATIONAL BOARD
                  ECUMENICAL JURY PRIZE                                            TORONTO                                                  OF REVIEW
                       CANNES                                                      INTERNATIONAL
                                                                                 FILM FESTIVAL 2001
                                                                                                                                                  FREEDOM OF
                    FILM FESTIVAL 2001                                                                                                          EXPRESSION AWARD




                                  Avatar Films presents a film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf “Kandahar” Screenplay by Mohsen Makhmalbaf Photography Ebrahim Ghafouri
                                    Music Mohamad Reza Darvishi Sound Berhouz Shahamat and Faroukh Fadaï Assistant Director M. Mirtahmasb and Kaveh Moinfar
                               Assistant Photographer Hassan Amiri and Hashem Gerami Photographer on Location M.R. Sharifi Director of Production Syamak Alagheband
                     Production Manager Abbas Saghrisaz Produced by Makhmalbaf Film House (Iran) Bac Films (France) and StudioCanal Directed & Edited by Mohsen Makhmalbaf


   Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s latest film, on many 10 Best Lists for 2001, is a semi-fictionalized re-enactment
  of its star’s real-life journey into Afghanistan to rescue her sister. Gorgeously shot, the film brings home
                in a visceral way the poverty, fanaticism and oppression of life under the Taliban.
                         IRAN • 2001 • 85 mins • Color • In Farsi with English subtitles
       FILM REVIEW                                       Los Angeles Times                                                           Friday, January 11, 2002




    ‘Kandahar’ Proves Moving and Timely
                                                                  KEVIN THOMAS

        The film tells a personal and socially conscious tale of life for women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan
                  ohsen Makhmalbaf's "Kandahar,"

       M          a powerful depiction of oppression
                  and hardship under Taliban rule,
       would have been an important picture even
       if the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks never
       occurred. It is but the latest prize-laden,
       critically acclaimed work of one of Iran's
       major directors, who combines here the
       intense social consciousness of his earlier
       work with the poetic sensibility of his more
       recent films.
          In this post-Sept. 11 world, "Kandahar,"
       its very title only newly familiar,
       understandably drew far wider audiences in
       New York than usual for an Iranian film. It
       was helped also by the fact that it is largely
       and credibly in English.
          Then, just before Christmas, the film
       received unusual publicity--or notoriety,
       anyway--when stories broke detailing the
       strong possibility that one of the film's
       leading players, Hassan Tantai, an African
       American, may be a former Howard
       University student who fled to Iran in 1980
       after fatally shooting a leading Iranian
       dissident in Bethesda, Md.
          With the utmost simplicity, Makhmalbaf         without a burst of the hearty humor that          create a steady flow of stunning images,
       tells the story of a beautiful Afghan-born        from time to time relieves the bleakness and      accompanied by Mohamad Reza Darvishi's
       journalist, Nafas (Nelofer Pazira), who fled      misery the film depicts. A boy named Khak         intoxicating yet spare score.
       to Canada with her family nine years earlier      (Sadou Teymouri), expelled from a school             "Kandahar" is a film of passion and
       at the advent of Taliban rule, leaving a sister   that intersperses chants on the operation of a    immediacy, yet one that's marked by the
       behind. The year is 1999, and Nafas has           semiautomatic weapon with traditional             rigorous detachment typical of the director.
       received word that her sister is so               Islamic prayers, escorts her on foot for some     As before, Makhmalbaf is skilled at eliciting
       despondent over having been maimed by a           distance.                                         natural, unself-conscious portrayals from
       land mine, added to her plight as a woman            Then Hassan Tantai's Tabib Sahid, a self-      nonprofessional actors. Pazira actually is an
       under Taliban rule, that she declares she will    proclaimed physician to the needy, agrees to      Afghan-born Canadian journalist. This
       commit suicide during an approaching solar        take her in his horse-drawn cart for most of      remarkably revealing and timely film, in
       eclipse, an apt metaphor for the darkness         the remainder of the journey but chooses not      which the depiction of pain and sorrow is
       enveloping Afghanistan.                           to explain why he can't take her all the way      suffused with a sense of beauty and a
          Nafas makes her way to Iran's border           into the city.                                    graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to
       with Afghanistan and, donning a burka, is            Nafas' journey allows Makhmalbaf to            glowing advance notices.
       determined to enter her native country and        observe the suffering and desperate poverty
       make her way to Kandahar to try to stop her       visited upon the Afghan people under                           KANDAHAR
       sister from killing herself.                      Taliban rule. In the film's most stirring         A Makhmalbaf Film House (Iran) and Bac
          She has but two days to make a difficult,      sequence, Afghan men beg for prosthetic           Films (France) co-production. Writer-director-
       dangerous journey through desert terrain.         legs and arms handed out at a Red Cross           editor Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Cinematographer
       Ever the journalist, she tape-records her                                                           Ebraham Ghafouri. Music Mohamad Reza
                                                         encampment to those who have been
                                                                                                           Darvishi. In English, and Pashtu and Farsi with
       impressions at every turn.                        maimed by land mines; the prosthetics are at      English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 25
          At the outset she manages to persuade an       so great a premium that the waiting list          minutes.
       Afghan returning to his homeland with his         is a year. The vast open spaces also              Nelofer Pazira: Nafas
       large family to pass her off as one of his four   allow Makhmalbaf and his outstanding              Hassan Tantai: Tabib Sahid
       wives. He agrees to the proposal, but not         cinematographer, Ebraham Ghafouri, to             Sadou Teymouri: Khak



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