Sadeq Naseri is an Afghan filmmaker who works within the genre of documentary. He is based in Kabul, which you will be aware of due to the most recent news, of the city falling to the Taliban. In a short matter of days from the Taliban entering Kabul, Sadeq Naseri’s life has changed.
He can remember when the Taliban were last in power and the restrictions that were in place. It was not possible to sit with women outside and drink coffee and chat. Sadeq’s recent work has been focused on the emancipation of Afghan women. It is something that he feels strongly about. He doesn’t want to see another generation destroyed by the oppression that the Taliban brings into everyday life.
Only two weeks ago, Sadeq was excitedly working on a trailer to his new documentary ‘Farkhunda‘. It is a documentary about the brutal killing of a young Muslim woman named Farkhunda Malikzada, who was publicly lynched by a mob in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan in March 2015. For this new work, Sadeq reached out to the British filmmaker Jaime Cleeland for artistic direction on the project and a stop-motion animator, Labros Kordolaimhs. from Greece. For Sadeq, this was a great opportunity to collaborate with professionals who were giving their time to the project freely. It seems, for the foreseeable future, the project will be on hold. Sadeq was planning on shooting a reenactment scene with a local theatre group, who had previously performed a reenactment of the killing of Farkhunda. He says “that it has taken many years for cinema to find its position within the present Afghan culture, and that is likely to be destroyed by the presence of the Taliban and their beliefs”.
