We talked to Gözde Kural about her fascination with Afghan culture, the peculiar local practices she encountered there, and the mission behind her second film, Cinema Jazireh [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Gözde Kural
scheda film], which reveals the current realities of life in Afghanistan. It has just premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, as part of the Crystal Globe Competition.

Cineuropa: Why did you choose to set both your debut feature, Dust, and Cinema Jazireh in Afghanistan? Do you have a personal connection to the country?
Gözde Kural: Not really, but since secondary school, I’ve been drawn to the Middle East – especially places affected by war. I travelled to Afghanistan after graduating, just before the Taliban returned, and kept going back over the years, also exploring Pakistan, India and Iran. Kabul, and the people I met there, really influenced me. Filming Dust there was challenging, as many would mistake the camera for a weapon – they feared it. With Cinema Jazireh, I wanted to move beyond realism and create something poetic from the fragments I’d gathered. With the first one, I learned how to shoot a film, while here, I was more concerned with creating cinema – how to use time, silence, music and emotional rhythm.

How did you transform the real-life snapshots you collected into a fictional, allegorical story?
It all started with two practices that I found particularly striking: Bacha Posh, where girls are raised as boys so they can move freely in society, and Bacha Bazi, where young boys are exploited by older men. I met people connected to both. As I travelled, I heard stories of war, loss and survival that stayed with me. A man who buried bodies by a river inspired the gravedigger in the film. I didn’t want one story, but a small world of memory and resilience – cinema as a place where these lives converge.

Cinema Jazireh itself – the physical crosspoint of the characters – is also fictional, as the word jazireh means “island”; it evokes an association with a refuge. It’s a symbolic space untouched by war, where strangers carrying grief and hope come together. They watch Titanic, an emblematic film for the pop culture of the 1990s, and for them it is a metaphor: a sinking world of lost dreams and broken systems.

The film centres on a woman who disguises herself as a man. Does she have any specific inspiration?
Leyla is not based on one person, but on several strong women whom I met in Afghanistan, and on my own mother, who is an archaeologist. I often wondered what kind of life she might have had without me. In Kabul, I met a woman taxi driver with an incredible presence. These are the types of women who shaped the character of Leyla, while in Turkish, the name of her missing son, Omid, means “hope.” In the film, she’s a former teacher who has lost her child and is trying to cross the border. But her endless search is also a metaphor for a hopeful future that might still be possible.

The queer storyline is rare in a film about this region. How did that emerge?
After finishing Dust, I told myself that I was done with Afghanistan. It had been too emotionally draining. But a bizarre graphic contrast came to my mind: a woman disguised as a man, and a man disguised as a woman. Why would they end up like this?

In Afghanistan, gender and sexuality are shaped in different ways than they are in the West. I met boys involved in Bacha Bazi. Many of them didn’t see themselves as queer – they were just trying to survive by pleasing older men. One of them told me, “This is my heaven. I have nowhere else to go.” That line made it into the film. The character of Zabur is not just a victim; he’s also dreaming of something beyond what he knows. The film does not make a political statement about queerness; it reveals that oppressive regimes affect both genders.

Tell us about Ali Karimi, the boy who plays Azad. How did you cast him?
We found him after seeing over 100 videos – he is talented, intuitive and fearless. We involved his family and worked with a psychologist throughout the process, framing the experience as a game. It was very important to me that he felt safe and protected. You can’t make this kind of film unless trust is real and mutual.

What about the challenges of shooting in Afghanistan?
We did shoot a few scenes in a border area, but most of it was shot in Turkey, as the geography is similar enough to be convincing. Today, shooting in Afghanistan is close to impossible – not just for political reasons, but because the infrastructure for art has been dismantled. Even local artists can’t work freely. The intention of Cinema Jazireh is to raise awareness about the situation of Afghan woman, their lack of education and fundamental rights, as well as the overall poverty and limited access to water in the country.