Recording of the public film screening at postane on August 14th with the movie House No. 30, Kabul.
In the discussion afterwards, we discussed the question how journalism can survive in exile.
This short film is a continuation of Abbas Rezaie‘s award-winning feature documentary, The Etillaat Roz. It tells the story of the final weeks of the newspaper in Kabul when the Taliban recaptured the city and gives a glimpse into what happened to the editorial staff who were forced to flee – seeking refuge in Europe and the US – while keeping the newspaper active online. The narrative of the film will be structured around the reflections of Abbas Rezaie, who happened to be in the middle of a turbulent historical time with his camera. He wakes every morning, turns on his camera, and starts to capture the fragmented reality of the office and a country on the verge of collapse. He will reflect on his fears, hopes, the future, what would happen the next day, and the past, when his father took him to a cinema in Iran to watch a documentary about the collapse of the Afghanistan government in the 1970s.
The short film is a “long poem before the collapse” and a reflection of someone standing in the middle of an unfolding historic event.
