Cineuropa sat down with documentary director Aboozar Amini to discuss his documentary Kabul, Between Prayers [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Aboozar Amini
scheda film], which world-premiered out of competition in Venice and which has now won the main prize at the Astra Film Festival (read news). The filmmaker, who left Afghanistan in 2001, breaks down for us how he approached making the second part of his documentary trilogy about Kabul that revolves around two brothers, Samim and Rafi.

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Cineuropa: Your previous film, Kabul, City in the Wind [+leggi anche:
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trailer
scheda film], was made under very different social and political circumstances in Afghanistan. What made you decide to return to the city? What changes - in the city itself or among its people – left the strongest impression on you?
Aboozar Amini: This film is part of a trilogy about the city of Kabul. The first, Kabul, City in the Wind, was made during the republic, a time scarred by the lingering shadow of war and deeply rooted governmental corruption. It showed how those forces shaped people’s everyday lives. Kabul, Between Prayers began when the Taliban returned to power. Suddenly, people woke up to a new reality. The idea was to capture this shift, to look at the city through the eyes of those living under this new order, and to explore, even if only briefly, the inner world of those we often only see as villains. The third part, now in development, is from the perspective of children, those growing up in the aftermath of adult wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Ukraine.

What struck me most on my return to Kabul was the exhaustion. People are tired, not just physically, but historically. They’ve lived through communism, Western democracy, and now Taliban rule. Many no longer argue about ideology; they simply want to survive, to earn their daily bread, and go home. It’s not resignation, it’s the fatigue of a people who have given too much.

How did you find your protagonist and gain access to his private spaces and inner thoughts?
It happened by coincidence. My cameraman met him on a bridge in Kabul while he was doing his checkpoint shift. He spoke openly and without hesitation - there was something genuine in the way he faced the camera. When I watched the footage later on, I saw a depth that could carry the whole film. Documentary work is about patience and trust. You don’t just barge into someone’s world with a camera, you wait until you’re invited. By spending time with them and truly listening, you slowly gain access to their inner life. Too many films are made in a hurry; they capture surfaces, not realities. The result is that characters are reduced to symbols, serving fixed ideas. That kind of filmmaking doesn’t encourage understanding or empathy. My aim is the opposite: to let the person speak before the idea speaks for them.

In the film, you contrast a child’s innocent perspective with poisonous propaganda. Was that something you had in mind from the start?
Rafi represents the next generation, shaped by a far more systematic and controlled ideological education than the previous one. During his adolescent years, he’s overloaded with the notion of “victory”, a triumph over perceived enemies, particularly the United States. This indoctrination instils a sense of unbroken pride which he expresses confidently, believing that his generation has freed itself from foreign influence. But beneath this confidence lies his natural playfulness and tender adolescence, instincts that belong to him as both a child and as a child of Afghanistan. His path toward ideology, however, emerged as a result of his surroundings. It’s something that was imported long ago, during the period when the Afghans were fighting against the Soviet Union, and it’s grown stronger and more aggressive ever since. His trajectory is significant because it illustrates how ideology can be internalised and normalised from a young age. In this sense, Rafi’s character might serve as a stronger focal point than his older brother’s, not merely as an individual story but as a lens through which to examine the persistence and evolution of radical thought within Afghan society. Ideology has remained deeply embedded since the war with the Soviet Union and continues to shape collective consciousness today.

One of the film’s most powerful scenes is the one where Samim answers the question asked by the person he sees in the mirror. He simply says that he sees himself and, if he’s wearing a turban, then he sees himself in a turban. He seems to lack the capacity for deeper self-reflection or critical distance. Why did you ask him that question, and what do you make of his answer?
Sometimes, the question speaks louder than the answer. In this case, his answer is predictable and the way he replies reveals much more to me than any forcefully extracted social and cultural claim, artistic manifesto or political statement. To me, the art of cinema is in its purity and simplicity which suggest and hide rather than pointing and shouting.

Women are barely visible in your film, in the same way that they’ve largely disappeared from public spaces, except perhaps in the scene with a female taxi passenger stopped by a patrol. Did you consider including more female characters in the film at any point?
The absence of women in the film isn’t an artistic choice that I made for effect; it reflects a social reality. In today’s Afghanistan, women have been systematically erased from public life: from workplaces, universities, and schools. Their absence is the result of deliberate policy and ideological control. Cinema, as a language of metaphor, can mirror this condition more powerfully through what it withholds than what it shows. The absence itself turns into a statement, showing it rather than shouting about it. But there’s one fragile space that the authorities can’t totally dominate: the streets. The streets belong to everyone: to the poor, to those without power. We still see women there, but they’re like ghosts: they’re present but unseen, vulnerable yet defiant. In one scene, a young woman is arrested at night; she chooses silence, not answering the men who try to intimidate her. For me, that moment conveys the courage and resistance of women in Afghanistan today, barely visible but unbroken.