On August 3rd 2021, the Taliban marched into Kabul, which had been abandoned by US and NATO troops, and seized power in Afghanistan for the second time since 1996. The Berlin-based Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at arrived in Kabul shortly after, after coming to an agreement with the Taliban. He will follow Taliban air force commander Mawlawi Mansour and his lieutenant M. Javid Mukhtar for a year. He will never be unaccompanied and can only film what the Taliban allowed him to see.

Nash’at spoke with the Taliban with the help of a translator who told him he doesn’t want to know what the Taliban is saying about him. Otherwise, the film would’ve never happened. “If his reports are bad, he will die,“ Mawlawi casually says about the director to one of his underlings.

What the film shows must therefore be viewed with a certain degree of reservation, as Nash’at himself explains. At the start, the Taliban enters the conquered US base “Hollywoodgate.“ According to the official reports of the US military, all of the weapons, helicopters, and airplanes were made unusable before the US army withdrew. That’s not how it looks in the film. The Americans left military equipment worth 7.12 billion dollars, according to the Pentagon. The airplanes are damaged, but Mawlawi’s engineers are certain they can repair them. The base houses Black Hawk helicopters, bombers, combat aircraft, and transport aircraft. Mawlawi has been blessed with a real air force, and he dreams of conquering Tajikistan. At a military parade, the Taliban air force, with its freshly painted aircraft, flies over the captured tanks. Shortly thereafter, Nash'at was forced to flee Afghanistan. The secret police had demanded that he present his photographs.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy