31/08/2023 - VENICE 2023: Ibrahim Nash’at’s doc provides a close-quarters look at the first year of the Taliban’s new regime in Afghanistan following the US withdrawal, but it can only illuminate so much

It’s been said that journalism is the first rough draft of history: a good film, and especially a good documentary, can be an audience’s first real exposure to and immersion in that history, and potentially very gently alter it. These concerns are paramount when assessing Hollywoodgate [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ibrahim Nash’at
film profile], which provides extraordinary access to one of the most distressing recent upheavals in the Middle East – the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan – as well as the most critical foreign policy event of Joe Biden’s US presidential career to date. Premiering early, out of competition, at Venice, after which it will play Telluride, Ibrahim Nash’at’s short, but maybe too slender, documentary is a credible act of witness, yet the broader ellipses in what it’s able to show nag distractingly.

Previously a top journalist for Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera, Nash’at was able to convince the Taliban higher guard – via the essential go-betweens of one of their “fixers”, and a translator – to let him shadow two members of their military command, once the dust had settled on the establishment of their new state, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in September 2021. These are Malawi Mansour, the newly appointed Air Force commander, and M J Mukhtar, billed in an on-screen caption as a lieutenant, but really appearing to be more of a foot soldier, whose main duties are supervising the Taliban’s transition from military insurgency to full-on military regime. Giving the movie its title, and also some of its presiding spirit, the literal Hollywoodgate is an abandoned American base – thought to be a secret CIA headquarters – where the former occupiers have left behind no less than $7 billion worth of military hardware; Nash’at’s film trembles with terror at how they’ll potentially deploy it, once the various damaged Black Hawk helicopters and jet fighters are repaired.

Exposition and explanation are at a minimum, and observation – both intentionally and pragmatically – is what we’re given. Nash’at, alongside co-editors Atanas Georgeiev and Marion Tuor, choose instances with an eye on dramatic irony, and even dark humour: we have long tracking shots of the Taliban leaders and grunts in robes, wandering solitarily amongst giant indoor basketball courts and pop-cultural paraphernalia like Dallas Cowboys-branded beer glasses. A beturbaned man cautiously stands on a cardio gym machine and gestures to the camera: “It can make my belly smaller!” The acknowledgement and fear of the off-screen Nash’at from his subjects is another telling detail, perhaps as they realise the medium’s potential propagandistic power, or the extent to which they can enforce further censorship. A documentary is helpfully explained by one on-screen figure to another as “like a movie with real people”. Another worries, “I hope he doesn’t bring us shame in front of China.”

The disappointment of Hollywoodgate is that for consumers of recent current-affairs news (extending to the USA’s overall retaliation after 9/11), the revelations are scant. Certain footage choices feel almost obligatory: we return to the desert caves where the insurgents once carefully hid, for instance, to ensure that, as one says, “the Jews [couldn’t] find us”. The perilous crackdown on women’s rights is belatedly referenced in the final third, but only through the odd, indirect comment from the subjects. It would be against the observational ethos of this film, but more expansive coverage of the rest of the country, or even further expository voice-over than that which Nash’at provides at its beginning and end, in addition to other foregrounded detail, would have left Hollywoodgate feeling much less incomplete.

Hollywoodgate is a German-US co-production, staged by Rolling Narratives, Jouzour Film Production, Cottage M and RaeFilm Studios. Sales representation is courtesy of United Talent Agency and Cinephil.