Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Red-125 The film Safar e Ghandehar was shown in the U.S. with the title Kandahar (2001). It was written and directed by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.Nelofer Pazira plays Nafas, a woman from Afghanistan who now lives in Canada. She travels to Iran, and then to Afghanistan, to help her sister. (Her sister is terribly depressed, and plans to commit suicide within a few days.) There's a very grim scene in Iran, when children returning to Afghanistan are taught to avoid picking up dolls, because they may be booby-trapped with explosives. Then Nafas crosses into Afghanistan with a group of returning refugees.The remainder of the movie--set in Afghanistan--makes the situation in Iran look idyllic. All the women wear the burqa (burka), so that we can't see them, and they have to see the world through a semi-transparent veil. Lawlessness abounds. Gunmen--I assume they are Taliban--roam the area and operate at will. Most horribly, people with amputated limbs are everywhere. There's a whole culture of amputations and artificial limbs, with more amputations from land mines every day.Nafas makes her way though this dangerous landscape in what is, in essence, a road movie. Although the people she meets are interesting--and sometimes generous and helpful--the situation is so depressing that it's hard to find any comfort while watching the film.This movie gives us a snapshot of what it would be like to be a woman--accustomed to living in North American--who has returned to a very different homeland from the one she left. The director is Iranian, so I don't know how authentically the scenes represent Afghanistan. My guess is that they are authentic, and that they portray a sad and horrible truth.We saw the film on DVD. I think it would work better in a theater. It's a great--if grim--movie, and it's worth seeking out and viewing.(Note that the director of Kandahar, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is the director who is impersonated by the protagonist in the Kiarostami movie Close-Up.)

p_j_taylor2003 The film does have an almost documentary-like feel to it, that I think is because the main character is a journalist and she is presenting the world of Afghanistan to us. I found the film interesting, as another reviewer has put it, not in its politics but in its anthropology, it had the same fascination as watching a program on the Sky travel channel. The journalists mission, is very understated....the director held back from giving us a full on City of God oppression type of approach, but didn't, and I feel that was deliberately because he wanted us to experience the differences in culture between the Iranians and the Taliban governed Afghan side. He didn't quite pull it off for me, for two reasons....The first is I'm extremely cynical about watching any movie with a political bias, and this definitely has one. The second is, I don't think the central figure had enough charisma......Although thinking about it now, the two may have counterbalanced themselves quite well.... Anyway, it was interesting...so to was the documentary on the DVD, called Afghan alphabet. My concern about politics is illustrated nicely on that, when a young Afghan refugee, is used to show the oppression of the Taliban, because she is scared to remove her Bhurka for fear of sinning.....She is asked repeatedly what her name was, which she repeatedly said she didn't want to divulge and was clearly uncomfortable, and was in my opinion mentally bullied into removing her bhurka, which makes you wonder who is doing the oppressing now!!!

sandoak I was moved by the beauty brought to a situation of suffering and tragedy. As our protagonist struggles to find her sister, the horrors of postwar Afghanistan are revealed through simple encounters with a variety of people with struggles of their own. The pacing, which may seem tedious to folks used to fast action, allows a lyrical visual beauty to arise where another filmmaker may have shown chaos. In turn, this lyrical beauty creates a stillness where compassion begins and grows. What was distant & abstract becomes close & personal. We're shown a perspective on war that is at once starkly simple and deeply caring. I also enjoyed the taste of Persian culture. The legacy of Hafiz, Rumi & other great Persian poets flavors the vivid poetics of Makhmalbaf's cinematography, dialog, and plot structure. Quite a taut alternative to our American viewpoint.

paul2001sw-1 All cultural values are in some senses relative. We make criticise, say, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for forcing women to wear the burka; but our own society enforces different standards with regard to the male and female exposure of the chest. We might therefore say that the burka is oppressive not so much in itself but rather as part of a system that undermines the freedom of women; but this is to assume that in our sexist, and over-sexualised, society, women are in practice freer. In fact, I believe they are; but at some level it is important to acknowledge the arbitrariness of such positions at the deepest level; that they depend on prejudice (to use that word non-prejudicially), on values rather than reason. To argue that because we know nothing for certain we should therefore do nothing, think nothing is a doctrine of futile despair; but to be aware of the limitations of our own thinking, to know that for certain future generations will surely condemn us are clearly as we condemn others, is vital before we consider the values of societies other than our own, a secular equivalent of humility before God.This is not to say I would like to see a film defending the appalling Taliban. But even the most tyrannical regime is in some regards the product of the society it tyrannises: we are all both prisoners and guards. To understand that regime (and its true horrors), one needs to understand how it worked with, as well as against, the grain of traditional society; and what is good, as well as what is bad, about that. Unfortunately, this is not what we get with 'Kandahar'.It's a shame, because this film contains the potential material for exploring the ambiguity of life. Its central character is rude, arrogant and ambitious (a journalist travelling to Afghanistan to try and save her sister, she doesn't hesitate to try to try and make a story out of her ordeal at the same time). A returning exile, she might be considered as both having the right to criticise what is happening to her country and also the eyes of one who has seen enough to know what is wrong. But one could just as easily say that she has neither that in fact she has the rights to neither position. There is thus the potential to portray her with great ambivalence; but 'Kandahar' prefers the values of propaganda. So instead she is our witness, our seer and our reliable narrator; and the film is all the weaker for it.'Kandahar' contains some great footage of a bleak but beautiful country, but at times its limited budget shows. The dialgoue is strange, the second most important character is (bizarrely) an American, and a number of the scenes sit uneasily between documentary and fiction: Michael Winterbottom did something similar in 'In This World', but that film was more convincing, because the agenda of the director was less clumsily imposed on every scene. 'Kandahar' has neither documentary truth or dramatic ambiguity; and seems to view the world with a very Western slant. Perhaps evil is like Schroedinger's cat: something that can be labelled or shown, but not both at the same time. 'Kandahar' prefers to label; but I prefer more subtlety in my films.