But I knew right away the project had what great documentaries are made of - a compelling character, a dramatic individual story, set in an epic background. So, in the end, I couldn’t resist.

In pure filmmaking terms, it had many of the same elements as Hitman Hart, wrestling with shadows. But of course, the substance was of more political importance.

Nelofer’s search, and Dyana’s story, were a natural and powerful metaphor for the fate of the country and of Afghan women. Dyana’s letters are sad, desperate and poignant.

The shooting conditions were difficult. It was very hot (48 c in Kandahar). The roads were terrible, the drive from Kabul to Kandahar was the worst I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Years of rockets, mines and tanks have gorged the ragged ‘highway’. Along the way, I met a boy who didn’t know his own age, he couldn't count.

I met adult men who thought Canada was next door to Germany. They couldn’t read and had never seen an atlas or a globe.

In Kandahar we visited a cemetery where Arab Al-Qaeda fighters are buried and revered by much of the local population. Many believe that the graves are holy, and touching them will cure illness.

Without education and modern communications, it’s no surprise that people look at the world much as we did hundreds of years ago. Poverty and war have brought back medievalism. It made it much clearer for me why such extreme forces found refuge there.

One of the discoveries for me in this film, was how advanced Kabul was when Nelofer grew up. Afghanistan had a sophisticated intelligentsia, and a developed culture. Most of that has been destroyed, and not simply by the Taliban. The forces supported by the West during the cold war began the process.

I didn't find it as dangerous as I expected. It was a strange, surreal window of relative calm while we were there. But we could sense the turmoil beneath the surface (while we were there the American’s bombed a wedding party and the vice-president was assassinated), but people were mostly friendly and respectful to our crew.

But there were moments. Mines were the biggest threat. Once, Nelofer went exploring around a building, when a soldier frantically yelled at me that she was walking in an area with land mines. I called to her, to walk out exactly the way she had walked in.

When we interviewed the warlord Dostum, he was surrounded by troops and body guards. One had his finger on the trigger of an AK-47, with all of us locked in his sights. It's clear that the warlords are always near civil war.

One reason I was so interested in making this film, was that I felt Nelofer’s journey was a unique way to tell an important historical story. I'm very interested in the way in which today’s world is a product of the actions and policies pursued during the cold war.

In the name of fighting the ‘evil empire’, almost anything was justified. The West rationalized support for the Shah of Iran because he was considered a major bulwark against the Soviet Union. When he was overthrown, it was then justifiable to arm and support Saddam Hussein's war against the Iranian revolution. Years later, after millions of Iranians and Iraqi's lost their lives at the hand of Hussein’s dictatorship, the world is about to see another war . . . once again fought in the name of fighting 'evil'.

Afghanistan in many ways is a similar story. The extreme and fanatical forces within the Mujahadeen were supported as proxy fighters for the West against the Russians. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan was left to ruin, as war lords fought a bitter and astonishingly brutal civil war for power and drug revenues. The Taliban offered security and law, and with the backing and nurturing of Pakistan and its secret service, imposed a repressive and distorted regime. It set out to destroy what was left of the more urban, sophisticated Afghanistan that Nelofer knew when she was a child. It if hadn't been for 9/11, the Taliban would still be in power.

Now, if the country remains in the hands of warlords, and the world once again loses interest (which already seems to be happening - especially with the shift in American focus to Iraq), then it’s possible the whole scenario will repeat itself.

The hope for a documentary like this is to create an experience for the viewer, a sense of empathy. We want to make Afghanistan real for people, not just another abstraction we hear about in news reports. Not just another story that can be forgotten once the world’s attention moves on to something else.

As you can see in the faces of the women university students, of the children, there is a new generation that is willing and capable of rebuilding their country. Will the West provide real support this time, or once again, pursue narrow geo-political and economic aims that prop up warlords, paid to do the bidding of outside powers. Will these children have a chance to build a truly democratic Afghanistan, or will poverty and desperation create a new generation of recruits for extreme forces?