Aboozar Amini sets his newest work, a follow-up to Kabul, City in the Wind [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], in the same city as his 2018 documentary. Kabul, Between Prayers has world-premiered in Venice’s Out of Competition strand. The Dutch-Afghan filmmaker of Hazara descent – a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan, a dimension also explored in Najiba Noori’s Writing Hawa [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Najiba Noori, Rasul Noori
scheda film] – creates an immensely intimate documentary that intentionally abstains from intervening in the political context without, of course, ever erasing its omnipresence. Here, we witness the interconnected lives of 23-year-old Samim – a man struggling in his marriage while trying to live up to the standards of being a tough man devoted to the Taliban and its Islamicist rule – and his 14-year-old younger brother Rafi, who looks up to Samim and wants to be trained in his older sibling’s ways.

Unlike in other documentaries that immediately jump to an indictment of the social and political context – which is implicit here, but never harsh or invasive – Amini takes a gentle, personal approach based on intentional observation. Here, he captures not the mundanity of evil, but what might instead be called the mundanity of belief: how Samim and Rafi – and, by proxy, ourselves – are shaped by our social spheres and how we’re led to feel. Amini thus indirectly calls into question what is meant by the term “ideology” and why it is often only used in certain negative or exoticising contexts.

Bouncing between Rafi’s schoolyard games – capturing their childlike nature but never infantilising them – and Samim’s determination to abide by the Taliban’s fundamentalist ways, we see clearly how these elements coexist in the brothers’ lives. In some scenes, also with the help of DoP Ali Agha Oktay Khan, Amini’s visual-art background seems to jump out, as certain moments feel like part of an audiovisual portrait in their sensibilities. For instance, we watch a video of a man preparing to go on a suicide mission, set to autotuned music – a moment so familiar in its framing, yet so distanced in its content.

One of the most beautiful set of scenes involves the filmmaker asking Rafi a set of mundane questions from behind the camera. In this conversation, the teen recites his favourite segment of the Qu’ran and is asked if he knows what it means – he admits he doesn’t. In fact, he says he doesn’t understand any of the Qu’ran, but he likes that part because of its rhyme; his abashed smile quickly fades, but he half sticks out his tongue in amusement. This spot of hesitation turns into a different form of delighted embarrassment, blossoming into a wide grin, and he creases up with laughter when he is asked whether he has a crush (he does – on a girl named Nassima).

Amini uses the principle of “show, don’t tell” to maximum effect and with profound results. The juxtaposition between the above two moments epitomises the strength of Amini’s approach, letting his subjects reveal themselves through both content and context: the careful innocence of Rafi’s teenage self shines through the setting through which he’s been socialised, while the burden is never placed on the boy himself. Later, through the same filming device in the same location, we see a continuation of the conversation, as Rafi says, “Honour is for men, not for women” – again, with a hesitant laugh, almost as if anticipating a “gotcha” moment. The way his demeanour shifts tells us all we need to know about the origins of this discourse – and now he knows what that segment of the Qu’ran means.

Kabul, Between Prayers was produced by Amsterdam-based Silk Road Film Salon and Brussels-based Clin d’oeil Films. Mediawan Rights is managing the film’s sales.