A young Canadian woman named Nafas (Pazira) has managed to travel to Iran in hopes of making her way across the war-torn border into Kandahar Afghanistan. She seeks her sister who has vowed to kill herself at the time of the last solar eclipse of the millennium rather than submit to an arranged marriage. As a western educated woman Nafas is appalled at the draconian restrictions she finds placed upon the female inhabitants of Afghanistan. Referred to as "black heads", they have no rights, are refused any form of education, cannot travel unescorted by a male, and must be covered head to foot by a burka. Nafas hires a family to take her from Iran into Afghanistan but is abandoned by the patriarchal father/husband when bandits rob their traveling party of their vehicle and possessions.
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Eventually she falls in with a young boy named Khak (Teymouri) recently expelled by the mullah from his religious/military training school. For $50 Khak leads her toward Kandahar. They must first seek a doctor (Tantai) when she falls ill from drinking disease riddled water wells. The doctor turns out to be an black American who has fought for years in Afghanistan but after spending time in a Kandahar prison has become a medical practitioner despite a lack of formal training. He takes her to a Red Cross station where land mine victims wait for artificial legs to be dropped from planes by relief agencies. She must take her chances with a lying, one-handed thief named Hayat (Hakimi) to get her to her sister in time.
The review of this Movie prepared by David Fletcher
Kandahar is a film about a woman trying to find her sister in the baron lands of Afghanastan. Her sister is about to commit suicide because she does not want to go forth with an arranged marriage. The main character, Nafas, is an Afghan woman who has lived in America for some years, but is very competent with the Arab culture she must adapt to.
Kandahar has a complex series of events which lead her to making friends and helping other people on the way. Apart from her health, Nafas remains confident and strong throughout. Subsequent characters introduced help and hider Nafas, but they are all representaqtion of the diminishing situation in the middle east.
The sheer fact that parts of the film were shot in secret on the Afghanastan border is amazing.
The review of this Movie prepared by BJ O'Donovan
