The Sun Behind the Moon (2001)

If you really want to know, especially if you are a woman, how it was and in many ways probably still is, to live in Afghanistan, you should see this movie. This is truly shocking, without any seen physical violence. But the violence here is anyway bigger than in most "action movies" together.

The plot is about the Afghanian woman who is living in Canada. She has, through un-official ways, heard that her sister, still living i Kandahar, is planning to commit suicide. The Canadian/Afghanian woman tries to reach her sister and Kandahar. But there are obstacles, so to say.

This is like seeing a documentary and you get a real illusion of the terrible Afghan life. It deforms everyone, but it's also clear that it's not only the Taliban regime which is to blame for everything. Poverty deforms people morally. It even deforms the war victims without legs, who tries to cheat in rough ways to get prosthesis, obviously in order to sell them.

This is to be recommended. Definitely not a mainstream film.

Fmovies: I was very disappointed with this film. An excellent chance to portray the plight of the Afghan people was partially wasted.

Aside from a few interesting glimpses of the culture of the Afghan refugees, this film has few redeeming qualities. The scenes are contrived, the plot is sparse, and the acting is wooden. The crew would have been much better off filming a true documentary.

A poster wrote "There is one remarkable scene wherein hordes of desperate, one-legged men hobble on crutches across the desert as Red Cross helicopters rain prosthetic limbs down onto the sands below". Well, the scene was total B***S***! The Red Cross has worked in Afghanistan for nearly 30 years and for probably half that time has had the world's largest orthopaedic programme. Each and every limb is made to fit for each person and then there are weeks of rehabilitation in one of the many well equipped orthopaedic centres around the country after the limb has been fitted. There is no need to buy and sell them on the black market because they are free of charge to anyone who needs one. Always have been and always will be. There is also no way on earth that the Red Cross ortho programme has ever been run out of tents in the desert and absolutely no way the Red Cross ever dropped double prosthetics out of helicopters or planes. The entire scene is an insult to the Red Cross. And before you howl me down I have been working in Afghanistan and have seen the work done by the Red Cross before, during and after the rule of the Taliban. The writer, producers and directors should be ashamed of themselves.

The Sun Behind the Moon fmovies. A haunting depressing but fascinating film. I used to believe (naively) in the melting pot theory but the melting pot does not exist. Some cultures are so far removed from what we have been brought up to believe in that is is almost impossible to connect with in any shape or form.

I have always believed that each culture should be looked at on its own merits and the Western Christian/Judeao civilisation is not necessarily the answer to it all. But how can anybody find any merit in a society run by someone like the Taliban. Everybody is opressed, the women more than any, but everybody lives a miserable life. There is no compassion, no respect for divergent views. The poverty is so all pervading that survival at the most basic level is all that matters.

The film is not really a coherent narrative, more a series of vignettes showing what life was like under the Taliban. Despite the amateur acting it is a powerful film. A number of powerful images, the most powerful, to me, is the scene depicting how female patients are dealt with by a "doctor". Horrifying. Western society has many many faults but by god I'm glad I live in it.

I amazed with Hindu devotional song used in background.

It reminds that all god are same one and only but we pray at differently.

I have seen good movie, second to About Elly. Good movie. must watch.

It pictured day to day life of Afghan women.

It induce lot of inner questions like Dr. in this film.

Why should all happen for that people? why they can not like others in this world?

Director & lead charter in this story done marvelous work.

All charter brings the really in their face.

I love background music , really fantastic.

All cultural values are in some senses relative. We make criticise, say, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for forcing women to wear the burka; but our own society enforces different standards with regard to the male and female exposure of the chest. We might therefore say that the burka is oppressive not so much in itself but rather as part of a system that undermines the freedom of women; but this is to assume that in our sexist, and over-sexualised, society, women are in practice freer. In fact, I believe they are; but at some level it is important to acknowledge the arbitrariness of such positions at the deepest level; that they depend on prejudice (to use that word non-prejudicially), on values rather than reason. To argue that because we know nothing for certain we should therefore do nothing, think nothing is a doctrine of futile despair; but to be aware of the limitations of our own thinking, to know that for certain future generations will surely condemn us are clearly as we condemn others, is vital before we consider the values of societies other than our own, a secular equivalent of humility before God.

This is not to say I would like to see a film defending the appalling Taliban. But even the most tyrannical regime is in some regards the product of the society it tyrannises: we are all both prisoners and guards. To understand that regime (and its true horrors), one needs to understand how it worked with, as well as against, the grain of traditional society; and what is good, as well as what is bad, about that. Unfortunately, this is not what we get with 'Kandahar'.

It's a shame, because this film contains the potential material for exploring the ambiguity of life. Its central character is rude, arrogant and ambitious (a journalist travelling to Afghanistan to try and save her sister, she doesn't hesitate to try to try and make a story out of her ordeal at the same time). A returning exile, she might be considered as both having the right to criticise what is happening to her country and also the eyes of one who has seen enough to know what is wrong. But one could just as easily say that she has neither that in fact she has the rights to neither position. There is thus the potential to portray her with great ambivalence; but 'Kandahar' prefers the values of propaganda. So instead she is our witness, our seer and our reliable narrator; and the film is all the weaker for it.

'Kandahar' contains some great footage of a bleak but beautiful country, but at times its limited budget shows. The dialgoue is strange, the second most important character is (bizarrely) an American, and a number of the scenes sit uneasily between documentary and fiction: Michael Winterbottom did something similar in 'In This World', but that film was more convincing, because the agenda of the director was less clumsily imposed on every scene. 'Kandahar' has neither documentary truth or dramatic ambiguity; and seems to view the world with a very Western slant. Perhaps evil is like Schroedinger's cat: something that can be labelled or shown, but not both at the same time. 'Kandahar' prefers to label; but I prefer more subtlety in my films.