Kandahar

Lone artificial legs ride parachutes into a desert Red Cross camp along the Iran-Afghan border. A bloodshot eye peers through a hole in a makeshift cloth wall that separates doctor from female patient. Little girls are instructed to pretend to be ants if their home imprisonment under fanatical Taliban rule becomes unbearable. These and other images resonate throughout Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s compelling docudrama as an Afghan journalist Nafas (Niloufar Pazira) living in Canada re-enters her native land in search of a sister who lost both legs in a land-mine explosion and plans to commit suicide. Reports that Hasan Tantai, who plays a black American doctor, is in reality fugitive assassin Daoud Salahuddin, have recently bathed the film in controversy.