Iranian documentary ‘Alone Among the Taliban’, directed by Mohsen Eslamzadeh, is competing at Thin Line Fest, a five-day film, music, and photography festival in Denton, Texas, April 19-23.
The 65-minute documentary shows 15 days of the director’s stay among the Taliban, in Afghanistan, Mehr News Agency reported.
‘Alone among the Taliban’ was first screened in the ninth edition of Iran’s International Documentary Film Festival ‘Cinema Verite’ from in December 2015 and won the International Shahid Avini Award for the Best Mid-Length Documentary.
In its first international presence, the movie received the best documentary award at the 44th Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFVF) earlier this month in Ohio.
In the controversial documentary, a joint production of Iran and Afghanistan, the filmmaker goes everywhere that is possible, from people’s homes to the jails and courts, conducting interviews with local authorities and documents the way they think and govern their states.
It was necessary for Eslamzadeh to make several visits to Afghanistan, in order to get permission for filming the documentary in the Taliban areas, a mission impossible for other filmmakers in the past decade at least.
Eslamzadeh, 37, has made documentaries in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Venezuela and won some awards.
The Taliban held power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 when they were driven out by a US-led military coalition. The ultra-fundamentalist militia still operates in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan and is said to be responsible for spreading death and destruction in the two neighboring countries.
Add new comment
Read our comment policy before posting your viewpoints