between Afghanistan and Europe, a film chronicle of abandonment and waiting

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED

It is rare that a scenario writer, would he be placed in the most singular shooting conditions, does not yield to the editing, by professional superego, to re-establish the dramaturgical necessities of the story. It is not so here. Threatened with death by the Taliban, thrown on the roads of exile with his family, riddled with clandestine races in the woods in transit camps, knocking on the doors of Europe for three years, the Afghan director Hassan Fazili drew from it a film of great truth. Its title is borrowed from Midnight traveler (Phébus, 1991), humanist philosophical tale and masterpiece of his compatriot Sayd Bahodine Majrouh (1928-1988), himself the victim of a political assassination.

Fazili films the passing of time, seen from the side of those who have, fors time, nothing more to lose except their life

Renouncing the retrospective ease of adding drama to drama, or leaning into ideological thought, Fazili retains its documentary value in his film. A chronicle of abandonment and waiting, with its moments of despair and joy, shot with the family’s three mobile phones, forcing the spectator’s empathy and respect through its very sobriety.

Fazili, in fact, films the passing of time, seen from the side of those who have nothing left to lose except their lives. The counting of the days on the screen, which all end up looking alike, marks a progression which we can quickly see that it covers a desperate stagnation. On day 1, in 2015, Fazili stuffed the car with suitcases and cut the road with his wife, Fatima Hussaini, herself a director, and their two daughters, Nargis, 11, and Zahra, 6. We learn, through the director’s voice – deliberately factual – that a year earlier, he made a short portrait of Commander Mullah Tur Jan, a Taliban leader who freely chose to lay down his arms. It did not take more for him to become a target of the movement.

Blackmail of smugglers

The images that open the film are no longer in Afghanistan, but in Tajikistan, where the family has found refuge and sought asylum. Request finally rejected fourteen months later, and which forces her precisely to return to Afghanistan, that is to say to programmed death. While the Fazili are temporarily taken in by a family member in the country, it is at this moment that the decision is imposed on them to attempt the trip to Europe, a journey of 5,600 kilometers by car and 594 kilometers. days. Along the way, the filmmaker feeds his film with elements that allow us to better understand his history. His origin in a family which includes, between his father and his brothers, only mullahs. His lifelong friendship with a very gentle man who ended up joining the Taliban and to whom he owes the vital information of his conviction.

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