A director shouts. In a land where in the course of twenty years 2.5 million people died of hunger and war, and where 6.5 million still wander as refugees, he screams, risking his own life. Kandahar is a film with a message to the world, a message urging us to turn our heads and look. Kandahar is a film about an Afghan immigrant to Canada called Nafas, and her journey back to Kandahar to rescue her sister who decides to commit suicide. Her journey is one in which she risks her own life, and in fact, it is based on Makhmalbaf′s experiences. It is his own tale of the people in Afghanistan: people dying of hunger, people with only one leg due to a mine explosion, and about the horrible daily lives of its women. Thus, the fact that Nafas′s sister gives a time limit before her suicide is an allegory for the director′s warning that there is not much time left for Afghanistan. Perhaps the reason why Nafas is unable to finish the journey is because Mohsen Makhmalbaf wishes to leave a space for hope. (Kim Ji-Seok)