The documentary Kabul, City in the Wind offers you a unique look at daily life in Kabul. The film follows the chauffeur Abas and the brothers Afshin and Benjamin. We watch them going about their daily lives, and they address the camera directly to talk about their worries and dreams. The documentary captures life in Kabul and the emotional damage caused by the war.

Fearless and always on the lookout for passengers, Abas steers his rickety bus through the chaos of Kabul, where terrorist attacks are still carried out regularly. Elsewhere in the grim city, which appears to be permanently wrapped in a cloud of dust, the young teenager Afshin and his little brother Benjamin accompany their father, a former soldier, to a memorial with portraits of bomb victims. When their dad leaves for Iran for reasons of personal safety, Afshin suddenly becomes head of the household.

In his first full-length documentary, Aboozar Amini follows the stories of the bus driver and the two brothers. At home with his children, Abas rejoices, but happiness is scarce. His bus breaks down, and creditors are chasing him for money. To forget his troubles, he sings a song and smokes his hash. Afshin and Benjamin try their best not to disappoint their dad and take their chores around the house very seriously. Amid these impressions of life in Kabul, Amini has his protagonists talk to the camera directly about their worries and dreams—the Afghan nightmare is never far away.

Good to know

Director: Aboozar Amini
Duration: 88 minutes
Subtitles: English subtitled

The open-air film starts after sundown, which is around 21:30. If it’s raining, the film will be screened indoors in the Genève hall. Drinks and snacks will be available on our terrace before the film starts.

Review

IDFA director Orwa Nyrabia in Variety: “It’s a beautiful, moving experience of a film. It does not sensationalize or sentimentalize the situation of the country, but, instead, transports us to that place and invites us to experience people’s normal lives in it. There’s rhythm, and there’s visual, aesthetic ambition, and then there’s this other really important element, which is the filmmaker himself: he’s from Afghanistan, he came to the Netherlands as a refugee when he was a teenager, studied film here, and then he went back and started making films in Kabul. So the film is a tribute to immigration. It’s a tribute to being citizens of the world, not citizens of whatever nation we are born into.”