One Bullet

In Afghanistan many hundreds of boys, often as young as ten, are being lured off the streets on the promise of a new life.

The story of Shaista, a young man who—newly married to Benazir and living in a camp for displaced persons in Kabul—struggles to balance his dreams of being the first from his tribe to join the Afghan National Army with the responsibilities of starting a family. Even as Shaista’s love for Benazir is palpable, the choices he must make to build a life with her have profound consequences.

French documentarist Sonia Kronlund follows actor and director Salim Shaheen, an Afghan movie star who produced more than 110 low-budget movies in a country devastated by war.

The friendship between Christophe de Ponfilly and Commander Massoud, a legendary figure of the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invader, goes back to the filmmaker's first film, "A Valley Against an Empire", made in 1981. Fifteen years later, weakened, isolated, betrayed by many of his own, the "Lion of Panshir" has not surrendered to his new and implacable enemies, the Taliban. While preparing his next offensive, he evokes his commitment and his fights, and bears witness to a history in which he has been one of the main actors for twenty years. At the same time, the director questions the role and power of the media, as well as his own approach as a filmmaker. Commander Massoud was killed in an attack in September 2001.

"Inside the Talibans" - What will happen if the Talibans return to power? Swedish journalist Magda Gad travels the Herat and Wardak provinces of Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban fighters.

A single female voice sings of waiting in her garden for her ‘dark-eyed sailor’ to return from war, bearing the other half of their token, a gimmel ring. Three veterans pass on the road as she waits, and she asks them: “When you were fighting in distant lands, did you think of the home you left?” In reply the veterans relate their recollections. The garden images in the accompanying film represent ‘home’, but also stand for a more general possibility of redemption, of the potential of the past to return at any time, disguised and changed, to renew the present: “Each moment of time is a garden gate,” the song goes, “Through it my love may walk.”

As a young and idealistic war correspondent, Graeme Smith followed the troops into battle in Afghanistan. Now he returns to a place that gave him nightmares to see if there is hope for peace. Smith revisits old friends and acquaintances and sees the deep divisions in the country.

Over 90% of the world's opium now comes from Afghanistan. In this shocking new film, we ride the drugs caravan, from cultivation, to process, to market. On route, we lift the curtain on the hidden world of the drug barons; learn how to process heroin in the crudest of laboratories and encounter deadly gunfights on the Iranian border.

Near-silent and shot via a cell phone, a war veteran observes the world which has been colored by his experiences in Afghanistan.

No Greater Love explores a combat deployment through the eyes of an Army chaplain, as he and his men fight their way through a hellish tour in one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan and then as they struggle to reintegrate home.

Five Afghan men try to reach Europe. The filmmakers followed them for over six months, filming their clandestine journey and chronicling a migration combining fantasy and stark reality, setbacks and achievements, in the midst of the dangers of such trips.

A powerful and poignant film in which families and friends of those who have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq talk openly about their loved ones and their grief. Epic in scale and spanning seven years of war, this landmark three-hour film gives a rare insight into the personal impact and legacy of this loss.

The Soviet Army Prepares for Action in Afghanistan is derived from four shots of a Soviet film called Heirs of Victory (1975) which commemorates the Allied triumph over fascism in World War II. The original film celebrates the military might of the USSR in images of explosions and armed men leaping through flames. These images are subjected to such thorough manipulation that they become patterns flickering like a multitude of abstract paintings, with digital smears standing in for squeegee marks and brush strokes. Slowly the shots become less abstract until they are completely recognizable, though still somehow rather surreal.

Annie Goldson and Kay Ellmers’ doco, expanded from the film they made for Maori Television, takes a timely look at New Zealand’s military and media, notably journalist Jon Stephenson, in Afghanistan.

An essay film exploring the thirteen United States Presidents that have led the country through war and conflict from 1950 to 2025.

In 1979, the Soviets had ill-suited uniforms and inferior fighting tactics, and found it impossible to defeat the popular Afghan guerrilla army. They had underestimated their enemy and lacked the forces to win.

Korengal picks up where Restrepo left off; the same men, the same valley, the same commanders, but a very different look at the experience of war.

An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.

Afghanistan : les derniers résistants

A look back at the years leading up to the fall of Kabul and the perilous evacuation of civilians trapped inside the embassy in the hours following the Taliban's takeover of the country.