Product Details

• Actors: Nelofer Pazira; Hassan Tantai
• Directors: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
• Writers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
• Producers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Studio: Avatar Films
• DVD Release Date: September 11, 2008
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B001FWY01W
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,577 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A journey through Taliban country, April 27, 2010

By 

Joan Kemp "The First Dragon" (Ventura, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: KANDAHAR (Home Use) (DVD)

This beautiful film is a semi-fictional journey through a lawless section of Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The main character, Nafas, is an Afghan woman who has lived many years in the West, returns to rescue her sister. Everyday details of life are beautifully portrayed: the women in colorful burqas, applying make-up under their veils; Prosthetic legs being dropped from helicopters, drifting down on parachutes, to serve the many crippled by land mines.

Afghan refugee families gather at the border to return to their homes in Afghanistan. The children in particular are prepared for the change, carefully taught not to touch any toys they may see along the way. These are usually IEDs. Also, they are told that the girls won't go to school anymore, but maybe things will change in the future.

Nafas pays one of these families to take her to Kandahar; she poses as the fourth wife, and submits to the burqa for safety.

She meets a fascinating variety of people along the way: a boy expelled from a Madrassa for not learning to recite, who gets money by robing corpses; a Black American who came to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, but now has settled down to be a country doctor in a land full of tragedy. Unable to grow a beard, he must wear a false beard to satisfy the Taliban.

The elaborate procedure required for a [male] doctor to examine a female patient is truly cumbersome. And it is clearly understood by all Afghans that since the Taliban doesn't allow women to go out without a male relative, any male has a kind of duty to pose as husband, father, or brother to any woman who needs to go somewhere.