07/10/2009

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has chosen Havana Marking’s Pashtu, Dari and English language documentary Afghan Star as the UK’s official entry in the Foreign Language Film category at the 2009 Academy Awards.

The film looks at Afghanistan, where pop culture has returned after 30 years of war and Taliban rule. The television programme of choice is Afghan Star, a Pop Idol-style TV series in which people from across the country compete for a cash prize and record deal. Two thousand people audition, including three women. Viewers vote for their favourite singers by mobile phone and for many this is their first encounter with democracy.

The film follows the stories of four young contestants looking for a new life. But their journeys take a terrifying turn as one young woman dances on stage, an act frowned upon in a conservative society, threatening her own safety and the future of the show itself.

At the 2009 Sundance Awards, the film won the Best World Cinema Documentary Director and the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award.

Afghan Star is Marking’s first feature documentary, shot over four months in Kabul. Earlier, she directed The Crippendales (2007), a 30-minute film about the first troupe of disabled strippers winning the UK Channel 4 scheme for New Talent. In 2005 she made the Great Relativity Show, a series of animated shorts (3MW) that explained the Theory of Relativity. These won a Pirelli Science award.

Funded by Britdoc and More4, the film is an Afghan/UK co-production between Kaboora Productions, Roast Beef Productions and Redstart Media, with UK sales being handled by C4i distribution.