Pioneering Film In A Country Without Cinemas

On location in Afghanistan.

Wolf and Sheep is set to be the first art house film by a female director ever to come out of Afghanistan. 24 year old Kabul resident Shahrbanoo Sadat is directing the film, meant to portray the Afghan nation through images of a rural village. Art films are characterized by being niche, experimental and non-commercial, making them notoriously hard to market. This means it can be quite difficult to find a crew, let alone get funding for a feature art film, and this goes double in a country without cinemas, audience or a film industry. That’s why Shahr is currently crowd funding the project set to be made by a mostly Danish crew, produced by Copenhagen based producer Katja Adomeit and cut at Zentropa.

The director was one of the youngest ever selected for the Cannes Cinefondation Residency back in 2010 and has since had her work shown at MOMA and various festivals.

We gave her a call to learn more about making Afghan art films.

VICE: What draws you to cinema?

Shahr: I grew up as a refugee living in Iran, so working in cinema was a dream to me. And now I’m surprised, that there are so many untold stories and perspectives in Afghanistan. No one have had the opportunity to tell them yet. In this respect I feel that cinema is a powerful instrument to start a dialogue with the world.

And you’re the first female Afghan art house director?

Yes, most filmmakers focus on short films because of the budgets, and there being no film industry in Afghanistan. Even making a short film is a nightmare. You have to use your own money to make it, and when you’re done, a second nightmare starts: there’s no audience to watch it. The only way to get it out there is to send it to the festivals, but that isn’t easy either and the postage costs a lot.

Casting boys for the film.

Sounds rough. 

It’s both good and bad. People expect me to be a national hero and tell stores of human rights, because I’m a young woman. That’s not really my taste.

How so?

During the Taliban [occupation] we didn’t make any films. But after the Americans came, the government started supporting films about human rights and the dark sides of the country. The cinema of Afghanistan has since become a cinema where everybody expect the filmmakers to talk about violence against women, human rights concepts, critique of the war, election and so on. It’s about what they expect to hear, not about what I, as a person who lives here, want to tell. I want to film a different kind of story based on my experience.

What’s Wolf and Sheep about then?

Well, when I was in Bamyan, Afghanistan, I met an American optometrist. I had always seen the world totally out of focus, but until I met him at the age of 18, I didn’t know I needed glasses. So, I decided to make a documentary about the American doctor, and in effect about people who believe what they see is right, even when it isn’t. I researched him and his team traveling all over Afghanistan for two years, before sending my script to Cannes Cinefondation in 2010. But a week before I was to go to Cannes to develop the script, the doctor and his team were stopped by the Pakistani Taliban. They killed all ten of them for spreading Christianity.

One boy cast for the film.

That’s absolutely horrible.

I was so depressed. Instead, I decided to make a piece of fiction about a village girl with eye problems. She doesn’t know about it though, and through her we tell the stories of people, community and beliefs. It’s about routine and daily life.In my youth, I lived in a small remote village, and I saw it as an image of the entire country. Knowing the villagers, I felt I could talk about the country and understand its history.

That's why you’re using local cast from the village?

Yes, the idea is to cast an entire village so that everyone knows each other.

The director, Shahrbanoo Sadat. 

Great. Have you given any thoughts to the direction you want Afghan cinema to be headed?

The cinema in Afghanistan is like a mafia. A few people believe they’re the only ones who can make and discuss film. My plan is to focus on independent cinema instead of trying to join that group. I’ve also opened my own production company, Wolf Pictures, in Kabul. I want to work as a film producer, giving female directors the opportunity to come up with new projects while helping to develop and finance them. I want to find a way for there to be made two feature films a year in Afghanistan. If we’re making films, the government has got to recognize it and provide us with a place to screen them.

The first step is making film, the second is getting a place to screen them. I’m still working on step one.

Best of luck Shahr.