Afghanistan's women will see Cannes prizewinner, Iranian director says
By Claire Rosemberg
Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf poses for photographers after being awarded the Jury prize for her film 'Panj E Asr' during the closing ceremony of the 56th Cannes film festival 25 May 2003. AFP PHOTO
CANNES, France (AFP) The Cannes prize-winner portraying the plight of Afghan women - "At Five in the Afternoon" - will be shown in Afghanistan as well as in Iran, the young Iranian director of the film said Sunday.
Samira Makhmalbaf, who at only 23 won her second Cannes prize in three years for the film, said "this film for me is like a mirror, for the Afghan people to see themselves, specially Afghan women.
"I want my movie to live in the hearts of people," said an emotional Makhmalbaf after winning the Cannes film festival's Grand Jury prize for the film shot in 2002 in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Shot as legions of homeless returnees came home to a devastated land, the low-budget film using only amateurs as cast focuses on Nogreh, an Afghan woman caught between tradition and the modern world.
It was one of two films that brought the misery of both Afghanistan and its women to the glitter and glamour of the 12-day festival, the world's premier movie showcase.
Dressed in black with a scarf loosely covering her hair, she climbed onto the stage to receive her award saying: "I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women of the world."
"My film is about a woman who dreams of being president, but as George W. Bush is the world's most powerful president, then I'd rather remain a director," she said.
The actress who plays the heroine of the film is a 23-year-old like Makhmalbaf, a teacher and a mother of three whose husband went missing during the US air strikes in Afghanistan.
As Nogreh, wrapped in an all-covering blue burqa, she slips off to school in secret wearing high-heeled shoes and dreams of one day becoming president of the country.
Her father finds the irreligious "blasphemy" of Kabul too much to bear as women bare their faces and music once banned by the Taliban is played.
So when his son is reported dead in a landmine blast, he flees into the desert with Nogreh, his step-daughter and her sick baby.
"Though the Taliban have gone, their ideas are anchored in peoples' minds, in their traditions and culture," said Makhmalbaf.
"This film is not just about Afghanistan,"
she added. "It's something that also can happen in my country."
Makhmalbaf was earlier awarded the Ecumenical Jury prize on the
sidelines of the festival for her "vision rooted in political
reality and the poetry of dreams for tomorrow."
In 2000, Makhmalbaf won a special prize at Cannes for "Blackboards". She is the daughter of top Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who notably made "Kandahar".
"I wanted to show reality, not the cliches on television saying that the US went to Afghanistan and rescued the people from the Taliban, that the US did a 'Rambo'," she told journalists at Cannes.
"When I went there it just wasn't like that."
"Osama", the first-ever Afghan film shown at the Cannes film festival, scored another honour late Sunday when it was awarded a special mention by the jury in the Camera d'Or section which judges new directors.
The first feature by Sedigh Barmak, 41, attracted hearty applause when it was screened in the sideline Directors' Fortnight section, and was already named best film by France's AFCAE, an association of arthouse cinemas.
The movie is a journey across Afghanistan in the days of the Taliban, as told through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl who is disguised as a boy to escape the oppression weighing on her sex.
"The film is about the hopelessness" of those years, Barmak told AFP.
Barmak, who heads the struggling Afghan Film Organisation, was educated in Moscow and went into exile in Pakistan during the Taliban regime, returning only when it fell.