Shahrbanoo Sadat
Afghan filmmaker fears for her life in Kabul
A picture from bygone days: Shahrbanoo Sadat in 2016 at the Torino Film Festival in Italy.
© Valerio Pennicino / Getty Images for Torino Film Festival
The Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, like countless other people, is currently trying to flee Kabul.
The current horror in Afghanistan, especially in the capital Kabul, can hardly be described in words. A woman who does it in a remarkable conversation with “The Hollywood Reporter” Still trying is the Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat (31). In 2016, the now 31-year-old won the Art Cinema Award for her tragic comedy “Wolf and Sheep” at the Cannes Film Festival. Today, almost five years later, like thousands and thousands of other people in Kabul, she fears for her life.
She hopes to get seats for her family and herself on one of the planes that fly people out of the city overrun by the Taliban. However, your hope fades with every passing minute. “The problem right now is getting to the airport and finding the plane,” reports Sadat. “The first checkpoint at the very first entrance to the airport is under the control of the Taliban. And there are so many checkpoints on the way to the airport.”
She stayed out of concern for her family
In order to have a chance at all, she needs a form for herself and her fellow travelers that confirms that they all have a valid seat on an aircraft. This is necessary because many desperate people are trying to flee the terror without a ticket. However, the chaotic conditions meant that she still had not received this supposedly life-saving certificate. You and your loved ones could therefore do nothing but wait.
Nobody, including herself, expected the terrorist group to reach Kabul within a few days and take the city. Just one day before the surrender, Sadat even had the opportunity to leave the country by plane. But she stayed – because she would have had to flee without her family.
The filmmaker does not dare to estimate what the future has in store for her. But she knows: “If I survive this and get the opportunity to make films again, my work will have changed forever. (…) If I survive this, I’ll make films about what happened Has.” When and where that could be is uncertain. Only one thing is clear: it won’t be in their Afghan homeland.