Double Oscar nominee James Longley, who won the top award at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival on Saturday with “Mohabat,” will focus next on the Rohingya genocide.
Longley doesn’t mind being an outsider. His latest, “Mohabat,” is set in Afghanistan.
“I’m not attempting to become Afghan. I’m trying to help non-Afghans understand Afghanistan better. After fighting a war in their country for 20 years, this seems like the least we can do,” he says.
“I went to their country with the sincere goal of telling their stories, so I was accepted and afforded patience.
“I cannot describe what an honor it has been for me to live and work alongside the Afghan people, who are brave and pure of heart in a way most Americans could take a good lesson from.”
His protagonist, 12-year-old Mohabat, tries to hold his family together under Taliban rule after a U.S. drone kills his father while he’s out hunting.
“During the 20-year war, such events were common and untold numbers of civilians were killed and forgotten far from the foreign journalists in Kabul. Mohabat did not want his father to be forgotten, and so he stuck with us patiently throughout two years of filming.”
“Mohabat believed that we would do justice to the memory of his father, a poor man with a wife and seven children, who worked as a tea seller in a large market on the edge of Kabul.”
“When we are children, we experience the world most directly – and for the first time. When I direct a documentary in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza and show it to a Western audience, I know I’m taking them to a new place. In this situation, it’s most appropriate to give them a child’s perspective because [they’re] like a child in those countries, experiencing something new.
He’s influenced by Vittorio De Sica, Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, François Truffaut and other directors who “treat the lives of their child characters with great seriousness.”
“This can also work in documentaries,” he emphasizes. Especially when working in a “restrictive space.”
He wasn’t able to film women, however.
“It’s been a joy working with him, mostly because he’s the best documentary producer alive and also a deeply intelligent person. This kind of collaboration and level of trust is a dream for any filmmaker.”
“His familiarity with the place and the people was the key to making the movie. He grew up experiencing the same realities of war as the children in the film, so he could relate to them directly.”
“I suspect that my films are in direct conflict with almost everything you will see on television, but I can’t say for sure – I’ve never owned a TV. I don’t care about what most of those people have to say.”
