Emotional punch from journalists' Return to Kandahar

JOEL RUBINOFF
27 March 2003
Kitchener-Waterloo Record
 

 As it charts a Canadian journalist's return to her native Afghanistan to search for the friend she left behind 13 years earlier, the documentary Return To Kandahar (9 p.m. on 5) does the unexpected: it tells the story of a ravaged, war-torn country that's history and politics are more complicated than the last three U.N. security resolutions and brings it to jarring, emotion-packed life.

"The Kabul I remember was a place of music and learning and culture," recalls filmmaker Nelofer Pazira, who starred in a fictionalized account of the same story in the 2001 film, Kandahar.

But since her family moved to Canada in 1989, education for women has been outlawed, violence lurks around every corner, and medieval attitudes toward women make them virtual prisoners in their own homes.

This is the legacy of the Taliban, she explains, the fundamentalist regime run out of town by allied forces after the events of Sept.11.

But while the myth is that Afghanistan is now a thriving country filled with opportunity and hope, Pazira's camera tells a different story.

And as we criss-cross this poverty-stricken land ruled by warlords, we confront a culture that not only persists in treating women like property, but has one of the highest infant morality and illiteracy rates in the world.

Remember those billions of dollars in foreign aid promised after the allied invasion? Well, they never showed up.

And free from one extremist dictatorship, the country now finds itself at the mercy of equally destructive forces. Comparisons to the current war in Iraq and its potential aftermath are inescapable.

But if this were the film's main focus, North American viewers would pat their big, full bellies and fall asleep.

Which is why Pazira and co-director Paul Jay focus on the 29-year-old's search for her lost friend -- a symbol of Afghan oppression -- providing this mesmerizing, quietly devastating documentary with a human backdrop that allows viewers to engage with the material in a way a straightforward news documentary never could.

Not that the country's post-Taliban regression is some vague, academic concept.

When Pazira interviews female university students in burkas about the restrictions on their freedom, she is immediately confronted -- and bullied -- by outraged Afghan men convinced the documenting of women's voices somehow exploits their culture.

"I get to go back to Canada," she notes sadly. "But these woman have to live with this mentality and face those guys for a long time."

In the end, Pazira doesn't find her cherished friend, but discovers something every bit as meaningful: the truth.