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JUNG: In the Land of the Mujaheddin (US Premiere)
Alberto Vendemmiati and Fabrizio Lazzaretti - Afghanistan/Italy - 2000 - 114m - video - documentary - In Afghani and Italian with English subtitles
Winner of the 2001 HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize
In this beautifully produced look at Afghanistan today, a surgeon and a war correspondent decide to join forces and set up a hospital in a country that has had to cope with various wars for the last twenty years. After the Russians, the Taliban took society firmly into their grasp. Houses and schools have been burnt down, sons killed on the battlefield and almost everybody is hungry, an Afghan woman explains from behind her veil, perforated only by a few air holes. Women are beaten up in the street if they are wearing sandals that show part of their legs, so everyone is terrified of breaking the extremely strict rules of the Taliban, another woman explains. Meanwhile, tanks have conquered the mountains, soldiers are trigger-happy and the rugged, stunning landscape is strewn with mines, which are stepped on every day by countless innocent victims. The new hospital tries to help all of these war victims, but it is banging its head against a brick wall. The Italian surgeon gets discouraged at times, because he knows that every day brings the same calamities: one after the other, people are brought in with crushed legs and skulls, and the situation is nowhere near ending.
Click here to read more about Human Rights Watch's work on Afghanistan.
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