In March 2015, the Taliban put out a call for filmmaker Hassan Fazili’s death. Hassan and his family fled to Tajikistan, seeing protection. But after 14 months of asylum applications, no one has agreed to help the family to safety. Tomorrow, they are being deported back to Afghanistan.
These on-screen titles appear over shots of a family seeming to prepare for a vacation or long trip. They are casually standing in a driveway while packing a small car. The camera follows them back into a house that makes it plain this is not a family already in the midst of a vacation. The backstory of what has brought them to this point is filled in as headline, but the who-what-where-when-how details of the accompanying story will only be parceled out over the course of the film. The titles situate the format and structure of the film, however, in which only the headlines will really be able to be told. The story of the consequences of the death threat will cover three years. If it were split equitably into parts with the running time, each year would have had to be covered in a half hour. This is the type of story dependent upon hitting the highlights and making headlines.
“You think that people who do whatever they want are filmmakers? But people who have some judgment can’t make films? What you said is wrong. It’s because of this kind of talk that many Afghans call cinema corrupt. This is exactly their problem with it.”
One of the most often discussed scenes in the film comes after Hassan—Fatima’s husband—has complimented a teenage girl who also is one of the refugees in the camp they are held in at that point. Fatima takes exception to this as she sees it as an insult to a wife for any husband to remark on the looks of another woman, much less a teenager. The specifics of the disagreement quickly flares into a wider one encompassing which provides some background material on Fatima—she is an actress who admits to doing things for a role that she simply wouldn’t do in real life. The conversation starts out on a topic familiar to many marriages and doubtlessly one that is common to most, but takes an insidiously uncommon turn with Hassan’s initial reaction that hits back not upon Fatima’s jealousy but by bringing into question her standing as an artist.
The short scene becomes the epicenter for one of the themes which the film explores incessantly: when does self-documentation make the leap from documentary to exploitation? Indeed, at times the very structural foundation of using cell phone cameras to document a very serious and potentially tragic story becomes over the course of the film an incessant pondering of what exactly does separate the serious documentary from a Kardashian-esque (or, for another generation, Warhol-like) exercise in self-promotion. Fatima seems to be suggesting there is a line of demarcation and that line lies squarely in the lap of judgment.
“I'm gonna forget. I absolutely don't want to remember this in the future.”
The final word belongs to the older daughter of the family. Nargis has had a tough time over the three year struggle because of her ability to understand and interpret things which her sister has been too young to do. It is a horrible experience for all, of course, but there is something about being young enough to have no control and old enough to realize this which somehow makes Nargis seem the biggest victim here. Perhaps that is mere perception, but perception is what the film is about. It is a self-reflective meta-documentary at the very same time it is life being lived in the moment.
How can she forget now? It is documented forever on film and then the extra layer of becoming an actual documentary only cements the reality. One can run away from home movies by never watching them, but home movies don’t have the potential of popping up on TV or an internet site. An extension of the film’s themes of abusive behavior can, potentially, be applied to the parents. They can’t be blamed for what occurred in their flight to find sanctuary and avoid the murderous intent of the Taliban, but how much blame will eventually come their way if the future for their kids becomes one of PTSD?
