Word: film
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...draconian regime. His awareness of the human side of history was honed early on. At age 5 he was transfixed by a showing of Lawrence of Arabia at his hometown cinema hall in Kabul. He haunted movie theaters after that, taping together remnants of filmstrips to make his own films, which he would then show to his friends in tiny makeshift movie halls fashioned from cardboard. When the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, he joined the mujahedin guerrillas, eventually forming the documentary-film unit for rebel commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. (Massoud, also a film buff, introduced Barmak to Casablanca, Spartacus...
...takes a certain skill to lose money on an opium field in Afghanistan. Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak lost about $97,000 on his. For the making of his latest film, Opium War, which is set in a poppy field, Barmak had found the perfect site - a lonely hilltop in central Afghanistan, framed by the snow-covered peaks of nearby mountains. With the stunning vision of pink poppies swaying against the slopes of the Hindu Kush in mind, he finally obtained permission from the government to plant the illegal crop. Then he and his crew got to work building...
...Opium War, Afghanistan's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars and the follow-up to Barmak's Osama, which won a Golden Globe in 2004, is a black comedy. Barmak wasn't expecting the making-of story to be quite as absurd. Still, he is sanguine. "All these disasters, this struggle and search, that's what making a film is all about," says the 46-year-old director. "It's the perfect parable for Afghanistan: nothing ever works the way you think it will...
...Which, in a way, is what Opium War is all about. The film follows the story of two American soldiers who barely survive a helicopter crash behind enemy lines, only to land in a far more dangerous situation - the convoluted and toxic dramas of a refugee family forced to rely on poppy to survive. As the soldiers and the Afghans warily circle each other misunderstandings abound. The refugees have taken shelter under abandoned Soviet army tanks, which the soldiers mistake for a Taliban encampment. They open fire, setting the stage for anger and frustration. The Afghans fear the soldiers...
...dodging rockets. Making movies in Afghanistan is expensive, and there is no local market to speak of. Instead he relies on foreign distribution - Opium War will be screening in some 15 cities across Asia and Europe this spring, largely based on his success last fall at the Rome International Film Festival, where Opium War won the critics' award for best film. He hopes for more success - and jokes about the remote possibility of failure. "If I can't make it as a director," he says, "at least I now know how to grow opium...