Award-winning film looks at life under Taliban

The movie "Kandahar," about an Afghan woman living in Canada who travels back to her homeland to save her sister, has been an international hit.

From Kasra Naji
CNN

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- As the world's attention is focused on Afghanistan, a feature film about life under the Taliban has become a runaway success in Europe.

Based on a real story, "Kandahar" is about an Afghan woman living in Canada making a journey to save her suicidal sister back in Afghanistan. It's shot on locations in Iran near the Afghanistan border, using Afghan refugees as actors.

Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf says he wanted to make a film about a forgotten people under what he calls the savage rule of the Taliban, in the midst of a devastating drought, and after 20 years of war.

"'Kandahar' is the first feature film made on Afghanistan under the pressure of Taliban," said Makhmalbaf, whose film won UNESCO's coveted Federico Fellini prize

Now he says he is using the proceeds to help fund a program of literacy for Afghan children -- something he says is vital if Afghanistan is to become a democracy.

Makhmalbaf says that if world and regional powers had rained books instead of bombs over Afghanistan for the last two decades, Afghanistan today would not have been dragged into misery, hunger and terrorism.

"Maybe you don't know, 90 per cent of the Afghan women, even before the Taliban, did not go to school; 80 percent of men, even before the Taliban, did not go to school," he said.

Makhmalbaf has written to Iran's President Khatami, urging the government to lift the ban that bars nearly a half a million Afghan refugee children in Iran from going to school because of their illegal immigrant status. He's already funding the private tutoring of children here.

Makhmalbaf says you cannot get rid of the Taliban just by force.

"I think Taliban is not only a government. Taliban is something as a culture. Ninety percent of women have no education. How can they understand what is democracy?" he asked.