story & synopsis

 

Leon decided to try to make a documentary in Afghanistan from the moment the Soviet invasion became known to the world. He knew some Farsi and Russian and had for a long time been interested in Afghan culture and philosophy.

 

He felt that the standard image of the religious Mujahed projected in the media cotnrasted with how he had been accustomed to perceive this free-minded and humoristic nation.

 

He asked the late writer Idries Shah (who was of Afghan descent) for advice and was with his help eventually introduced to people through which the project was made possible.

 

Initially a great amount of obstacles delayed the project. Especially the efforts of the KGB to infiltrate the various Mujahed organisations made the project risky - as many filmmakers and journalists were caught and killed in ambushes, executed or put in jail.

 

At last in spring 1986 Leon could make the first trip to Peshawar in Pakistan to meet Mujahedeen who could take him into Afghanistan. He made a first crossing into Paktia (East Afghanistan) in March and had his first experience of what it was like to work in a war zone.

 

He returned in the autumn aiming to go to Paghman - a legendary region near Kabul. There were so many difficulties in the structuring of this expedition that time went by without Leon seeing any hope of the actual crossing to take place. He had a message through another source that there was a group of guerillas going to Herat.

 

This was also a unique opportunity. Herat was occupied like the rest of the country, but it was the only city in Afghanistan where the Mujahedeen had managed to keep a section without the Russians being able to get them out.

 

They were living among the ruins - no civilians were left in this part of the city - and they constantly made raids on the military installations in the area. At the guerilla office in Peshawar Masud Khalili showed him a map and outlined the trip. "It'll take two weeks to go there one week there, you do some shooting, and two weeks back" - it took five months. Leon went inside in November and came back out in April the following year. There was no means of communicating with the outside world.

 

The film project was financed by the Swedish National TV Broadcast company SVT through their local branch in Malmö and broadcast one part in May -87 and the full documentary in September the same year.