Word: mohsen
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This much of Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's lovely and terrifying movie Kandahar is true. Indeed, Pazira, 28, plays Nafas, the character she inspired--though in the film it is a sister, not a friend, she seeks to save--and the year is 1999, just before the millennium new year. In real life, Pazira only briefly penetrated Afghanistan's border. In the film, her character, shrouded in a burka and taking notes on a hidden tape recorder, is a brave, lonely figure constantly menaced by a bleak land and the day-to-day anarchy of the life she finds there...
...surely Pazira would never have had the chance to tell a tale like Kandahar. Directed by Iran?s Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film is the story of a Canadian journalist and Afghan exile, played by Pazira, who attempts to return to her homeland to help her sister, who is depressed and suicidal, a result of the oppression and fighting that, for most Afghans, have long been part of daily life. "The idea was not to have a film to discuss the political climate yet again," says Pazira, 27. "This was a humanitarian look, to see the pain...
...Afghani children in Kandahar, by Kiarostami's compatriot Mohsen Makhmalbaf, do not smile. One comely lad in a Taliban school loads a Kalashnikov rifle and obediently proclaims its virtues - it "kills the living and mutilates the dead" - as a mullah praises his recitation. ("Weapons," a visiting doctor says later, "are the only modern thing in Afghanistan.") Another boy, an orphan in the desert, will peddle anything, including himself, to keep going. He attaches himself to an educated Iranian woman who has returned from Canada to save her sister...
...Afghani children in Kandahar, by Kiarostami's compatriot Mohsen Makhmalbaf, do not smile. One comely lad in a Taliban school loads a Kalashnikov rifle and obediently proclaims its virtues?it "kills the living and mutilates the dead"?as a mullah praises his recitation. ("Weapons," a visiting doctor says later, "are the only modern thing in Afghanistan.") Another boy, an orphan in the desert, will peddle anything, including himself, to keep going. He attaches himself to an educated Iranian woman who has returned from Canada to save her sister. As Makhmalbaf showed in Gabbeh, he is Iran's great colorist; here...
Khatami has plenty of enemies--but also a vibrant, courageous collection of allies. Mohsen Mirdamadi, 44, an M.P. who arrived at the new parliament dressed nattily in a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, is typical of the breed of intellectuals who share Khatami's vision. In 1979 Mirdamadi was among a handful of students who organized the seizure of the U.S. embassy. But his politics moderated after he spent several years learning the ropes of Western democracy while earning a doctorate at Cambridge University. He is now a top strategist for the Participation Front, the moderate party...