“Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson . . . It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force. We should have helped the people of Afghanistan in improving their life, but it was a gross mistake to send troops into the country.”
– Retired Red Army General Boris Gromov.
Buzkashi Boys tells a compelling coming of age story that offers a glimpse of a rarely seen Afghanistan through the eyes of two of its youngest sons, as they make their way to manhood in the most war-torn country on earth.
This groundbreaking short film will be produced in partnership with the Afghan Film Project, a non-profit NGO with a mandate to strengthen and build the capacity of Afghanistan's fledgling film industry.
“Though there are 33 human rights film festivals worldwide, there are none in this region. Bahrain was supposed to have one, but it was cancelled following the protests [in the spring] there.” - Festival director and filmmaker Malek Shafi’i."Jafar Panahi may be stuck in an Iranian prison, but his film is playing in Afghanistan.
The popular Iranian neo-realist filmmaker was sentenced to six years last December for his alleged role in protesting his country’s contested 2009 presidential election. Panahi’s films are banned at home, but one – “Accordion,” an insightful short about two young buskers who have their accordion confiscated, only to find their oppressor trying to earn money with it – made its way across the border for Afghanistan’s inaugural Autumn Human Rights Film Festival in Kabul on October 1."
‘Most of the people in the West think about Afghanistan as a country where people kill each other in the name of Islam,’ says Ali Husseini, who is part of a collective of young Kabul filmmakers, explaining how foreign films can motivate the indigenous film-maker. ‘You just need to watch any of the Hollywood movies. We as Afghans are usually portrayed as terrorists with long beards in them. But we come from the middle of this society, and we want to show that we as well have a global perspective on things, just like in Germany or in the United States. What we want to show are stories where we speak about our lives, stories about earning money and trying to make a living, with parents raising their children and trying to give them a better future.’
This beautifully shot video takes us not only into the streets of Kabul but into rural Afghanistan where the thorniest issues exist and most of the fighting takes place. “The opening line of the film, describing Afghanistan as a “country at war with its future,” encapsulates the thesis of this outstanding work. The film gives a full assessment of the lurking but distinct threat that the Taliban currently presents in Afghanistan, as well as an assessment of the interventions of the United States.
Interviewed members of Parliament call for more reconstructive projects, such as building roads and digging wells, and warn of the consequences of an abrupt withdrawal, as the Soviets did in 1989. Otherwise, Afghanistan will devolve into a hub of international terrorism. The people of Afghanistan are quick to cite that the lack of United States initiatives in areas that are not combating the Taliban.”
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Susan Retik and Patti Quigley are two ordinary soccer moms living in the affluent suburbs of Boston until tragedy strikes. Rather than turning inwards, grief compels these women to focus on the country where the terrorists who took their husbands' lives were trained: Afghanistan.
Over the course of two years, as they cope with loss and struggle to raise their families as single mothers, these extraordinary women dedicate themselves to empowering Afghan widows whose lives have been ravaged by decades of war, poverty and oppression - factors they consider to be the root causes of terrorism. As Susan and Patti make the courageous journey from their comfortable neighborhoods to the most desperate Afghan villages, they discover a powerful bond with each other, an unlikely kinship with widows halfway around the world, and a profound way to move beyond tragedy.
From the ruins of the World Trade Center to those of Kabul and back, theirs is a journey of personal strength and international reconciliation, and a testament to the vision that peace can be forged... one woman at a time.
We first met Mir in Phil Grabsky’s acclaimed 2004 film, The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan. An unforgettable eight-year-old Afghan refugee with an infectious laugh, Mir lived in the stony ruins of the world-famous Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. For that film, Grabsky spent a year with Mir and his family documenting their hardscrabble life deep inside war-torn Afghanistan, but Mir’s story was too compelling to end there, and the filmmaker went back and spent ten more years with him. Boy Mir is shot in Northern Afghanistan, in an area so remote that Mir’s brother-in-law must hike two hours up a mountain for cell phone service. The landscape is stunning, but daily life is decidedly tough. We watch the mischievous boy grow into a young man whose former hopes of becoming a teacher or president of his country give way to the struggle for basic survival. Yet Mir never loses his good-natured spirit. This is a raw, intimate, and often humorous tale of life in present-day, turbulent Afghanistan.
Twenty-one years in the making, The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch for Peace launches into orbit the epic story of a remarkable Muslim peacemaker born into Pashtun warrior society of the strategic North-West Frontier Province of the Indian subcontinent — now Pakistan’s frontier region Kyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Pronounced “a miracle” by Mahatma Gandhi, Badshah Khan (1890-1988) raised a 100,000 strong nonviolent army of men, women, and young people — the Khudai Khidmatgars, or servants of God — drawn from the multi-ethnic traditions of Afghanistan and India. This movement united diverse tribes for an astounding 17 years to end British colonial rule. They were Muslims, as well as Hindus, Christians, Parsees, Sikhs, and Buddhists came together in the cause of peace, social justice, religious tolerance, and human dignity for all.
“In our fight for freedom, women stood shoulder to shoulder with the men in the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. We tended to the wounded. And we did whatever else we could to support the cause of nonviolence.”
–Lady Husn Afroza, A Khudai Khidmatgar (servant of God, soldier of peace), Pakistan
