Films
March 31, 2003

IN THE AFTERMATH OF LOVE AND WAR

Canadian directors explore a wounded family and a ravaged country

BRIAN D. JOHNSON  

 . . .  two new Canadian films bridge the gap between art and audience with breathtaking results: Flower & Garnet and Return to Kandahar . . .

. . .  A DIFFERENT kind of audacity is on display in Return to Kandahar. Airing this week on CBC (March 27, 9 p.m.), this documentary takes us into the tortured heart of Afghanistan. It was co-directed by veteran filmmaker Paul Jay and Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan-Canadian who became internationally known as the star of Kandahar (2001). In that movie, Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf fictionalized Pazira's abortive quest to find a missing friend who had written her a suicidal letter from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. He shot it in Iran, with surreal images of Afghan refugees and land mine casualties along the border. Now, with the Taliban defeated, Pazira carries out the search for real as the intrepid host of an unalloyed documentary.

Returning to her native land for the first time since her family emigrated to Ottawa 13 years ago, the 29-year-old journalist revisits her crumbling family home in Kabul, and remembers when Soviet tanks rumbled past the garden wall. She revisits her old school, now stripped of books and desks. As she travels in search of her missing friend, Dyana, the quest becomes a framework for an eye-opening excursion through a country ravaged by war and abandoned by history. Although the Taliban are gone, Pazira finds an Afghanistan in the grip of warlords. She's a one-woman inspection team. When male students challenge her right to interview their female classmates, this woman who refuses to hide her beauty, or intelligence, behind a burka demolishes them with fierce, indisputable words.

Straddling two cultures, Pazira is an inspiration, a journalist with analysis, wit and compassion. In just 60 minutes she takes us deeper into Afghanistan than all those endless hours of CNN. And with the media's eye now trained on Iraq, she reminds us that there is more truth in the aftermath than in the heat of the action.