Kandahar

Kandahar (Safar e Ghandehar, 2001) by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a drama you can watch online on iFILM. Nafas, a journalist of Afghan origin, has built a life in Canada. Then a letter arrives from the sister she left behind in Kandahar, who writes that she means to end her life before the century's final eclipse.

Nafas has three days to cross a country under Taliban rule and reach her. The road takes her through refugee camps, past men who lost limbs to landmines, through markets where a woman may not show her face. Makhmalbaf shot with locals rather than professional actors, and that choice turns the ochre desert, the burqa, the prosthetic legs drifting down on parachutes into testimony instead of set dressing. The film reached cinemas in spring 2001 and made noise at Cannes; months later the world's attention turned to Kandahar itself, and audiences came back to it with different eyes. Slow, unsparing, honest filmmaking for viewers ready to look rather than glance. Stream Kandahar (2001) online on iFILM.