Mathew Scott
Agence France Presse
BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA: The words don’t come easily for Afghan director Siddiq Barmak as he struggles to describe his homeland’s long nightmare. And when asked about his family’s future, they don’t come at all. With four children to care for, the Golden Globe winner admits to thoughts of abandoning Afghanistan as the Taliban return to the offensive eight years after their hardline regime was ousted in during the US-led invasion.
“It really is too complicated,” the 47-year-old begins. “You have to be there in the country to see what is happening and even then it is almost impossible to understand.
“For me as an Afghan, I am really disappointed because I love my land, my mountains, my rivers and my people,” he says. “I have never thought about leaving forever. But there is my family.
“My son wants a school where there is green grass, or even a tree. My children want to be safe and I cannot guarantee that any more. I wanted to help build that school but now, I just don’t know.”
Barmak’s voice trails off and he takes a moment to dry his eyes and regain his composure.
The filmmaker has come to the 14th Pusan International Film Festival to screen his most recent production, “Opium War,” but developments in Afghanistan are at the fore of his conversations.
Barmak rejoiced at the Taliban’s fall in 2001 and the departure of their purist vision of an Islamic state shorn of most forms of art.
But the Islamist militia is now resurgent, and recent elections have highlighted the ineffectiveness and corruption that blights the Western-backed Kabul government.
“What is the future? Everyone is asking that question,” says Barmak. “The people had some hope for a bright future, for a new generation. But after 2004 we started to realize that something was starting to happen.
“The Taliban was rising again. And now we see them dropping soldiers by helicopter from the south to the north, starting again to do as they please,” he said.
“Who is running this country? The Taliban? The Americans? The international community? Or we ourselves? No one can answer that question.”
Barmak was raised in Afghanistan’s northern Panjshir Province before heading to Moscow to study cinema in the 1980s.
On his return in 1988, he started working for the Afghan Film Organization, a government-sponsored cinema group, while producing a series of short films and documentaries.
But his career was cut short by the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996.
“I was in Kabul when they came into power and I spent two weeks talking to them,” he says. “But it was very clear they were Taliban. They were warriors, they had their guns and they were against cinema.”
Barmak then left for Pakistan, returning only after the Taliban regime was toppled. While he was away, the militants destroyed his early works – alongside the majority of films in the Afghan national film archive.
On his return he made “Osama” – the first film produced following the Taliban’s fall – and it travelled the world’s festival circuit before winning the 2004 Golden Globe for best foreign language film.
It told the story of a young girl who disguises herself as a boy to escape the Taliban’s restrictions on women.
“Opium War” features the same kind of drama, but its tale of two US soldiers who take up residence with a family of Afghan farmers is tinged with dark humor.
Barmak says it is a humor borne of confusion – and of a sense of hopelessness.
“Now there are no borders, no idea who the enemy is, no idea about much.
And so it is a very dangerous time for our country.”
Barmak spends much of his time educating the next generation of artists through the Afghan Children Education Movement, founded by the Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
While he remains unsure of what the future holds for Afghanistan, Barmak knows for certain that he will keep making movies.
“For me, I am working on a new script and if there is no secure place to make the film in Afghanistan, I will take it to Tajikistan or Kazakhstan, even Morocco,” the director says.
“But I still have to make my films. I have to tell some stories about the country that I really love. That’s Afghanistan and I am so sorry about what is happening,” he said.
“We are a victim because of our geography and we are a victim because as a nation we don’t really know ourselves.”
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