Afghan Reviews Media Partners Reviews Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Film Review: A Letter to the President (2017) by Roya Sadat

The first film by a woman after the fall of the Taliban regime, and ‘s submission for the foreign-language Oscar, is an extremely pointy production that deals with the inconsistencies of the Afghan legal system, which lingers between Islamic, statutory and customary rules, as it presents the issues women face in the country, through a genuinely feminist view.

A Letter to the President  screened at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian cinema

The film revolves around Soraya, a mother of two, who tries to balance her career as the head of the Kabul Crime Division and her life as the wife of a very rich but on the verge of alcoholism husband, who, additionally, is dominated by his gangster father. The already crumbling balance ends when Soraya decides to save a woman who is being accused of adultery and is actually sentenced to death by the village elders, and in the process defies the man in charge of the area, Commander Essmat Khan, who happens to be an associate of her father-in-law. The repercussions are huge and violence ensues in Soraya’s house, in a series of events that lead to her killing her husband and her subsequent imprisonment, facing the capital punishment. The only thing that can save her is and the efforts of Behzad, an associate who is in love with her but manages to make things worse when he expresses his feelings through an exhibition of his paintings.

Roya Sadat in her debut feature film presents the awful truth about the living circumstances of women in the male-dominated, fundamentalist state of Afghanistan, making a point of showing that not even high-ranking officers can get away from the rules of the Sharia and the prejudice of society. As we watch her husband and father-in-law chastising her to the point of violence for working, and staying outside her house in “inappropriate” hours, and the fact that even the court takes into consideration that she was presumably drinking, regarding the final verdict, one has to wonder, how undeveloped Afghanistan is, at least regarding human rights. 

As the movie takes a feminist view on the subject, we witness the blights of women in a country where 15-year-olds are being married to elderly men by matchmaking, where women are not supposed to have a career but to stay home and just be wives and mothers, in a world where men can do whatever they want with them without punishment and they get punished in the worse fashion, at the slightest “error”.

Soraya’s whole life seems to be an act of resistance against the aforementioned status, with her attitude finding its apogee in a scene where she returns a slap of her husband even harder. However, Sadat is not disillusioned, and the consequences of these actions are portrayed thoroughly, starting with the aforementioned incident and ending with the film’s finale. This last part also makes a point of showing that Afghanistan is still dominated by powers that can even ignore direct Presidential orders, in another pointy remark, political this time.

Although the whole story regarding the aforementioned is quite well presented, through Sadat’s direction and Razi Kashi and Ahmad Faried Farahmand’s editing, I felt that the secondary story regarding Behzad’s unrequited love was unfulfilled and somewhat unnecessary in the whole concept.

Berouz Badrouj’s cinematography, on the other hand, is excellent as it highlights all aspects of Kabul, both the life of the rich and the poor, and the events that occur in the deserts outside of the town. His approach to the action, which is mostly implied rather than depicted, seems to be a metaphor for the events that occur behind closed doors, which everybody seems to know, but none has the courage to speak about.

gives a great performance as Soraya, highlighting both her resolve in retaining her principles and not abandoning her career, and her despair on losing her children. as Behzad is quite good as the man in love who is willing to go to extremes to save the woman he loves, and Mahmoud Aryoubi makes a great “villain” as Karim.

If wanted to make a film that will make its audience feel the injustice of being a woman in the country, then she has succeeded to the fullest, in a movie that highlights the truth of Afghanistan in a very accusing, but highly realistic way.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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