Synopsis
In 2006, at the Art School in Kabul, a film course "Kabul - My City" was held. Students were given cameras and professional help from a young polish director by the name of Jacek Szaranski. The students came up with the ideas for their films and the style in which they would show Kabul. They focused their lenses on their closest surroundings - neighbors' children, ubiquitous kites and themselves. "Kites" has become a record of the present day Kabul from the perspective of an Afghan teenager. It also became a story about how a film passion is awakened, the difficulty of asking questions and the courage of hearing answers.
Kites had a simple starting point: cameras + youth + Afghanistan. Few people believed that it would succeed. CAMERAS? But there is no electricity! But not so long ago it was impossible there to record a human image. And the dust?! The cameras will be broken after three days and the nearest service is presumably in Moscow, isn’t it? Unless there is no problem at all because they will get stolen on the first day, since they steal there a lot, don’t they? Forget the cameras, but the youth?! They don’t have a TV set at home, and half of them have never been to a cinema and now they are supposed to have camera in their hands and what are they supposed to do with it? And if they do anything, will these “works of art” enchant European audience?
And Afghanistan... Everybody knows everything about Afghanistan because at least once a week you can see it in the news, because either something has been blown out or there is the polish army present there or the Taliban, someone has been kidnapped or has been released, every two weeks you have a catchy headline. And is there anything interesting in this Afghanistan at all? That’s what many friendly people said to us. But well, everyone can be wrong and we went shooting. When you have finally seen the film tell us whether it was worth it.
Kites had a simple starting point: cameras + youth + Afghanistan. Few people believed that it would succeed. CAMERAS? But there is no electricity! But not so long ago it was impossible there to record a human image. And the dust?! The cameras will be broken after three days and the nearest service is presumably in Moscow, isn’t it? Unless there is no problem at all because they will get stolen on the first day, since they steal there a lot, don’t they? Forget the cameras, but the youth?! They don’t have a TV set at home, and half of them have never been to a cinema and now they are supposed to have camera in their hands and what are they supposed to do with it? And if they do anything, will these “works of art” enchant European audience?
And Afghanistan... Everybody knows everything about Afghanistan because at least once a week you can see it in the news, because either something has been blown out or there is the polish army present there or the Taliban, someone has been kidnapped or has been released, every two weeks you have a catchy headline. And is there anything interesting in this Afghanistan at all? That’s what many friendly people said to us. But well, everyone can be wrong and we went shooting. When you have finally seen the film tell us whether it was worth it.