Director's View:

The Taliban was not a political regime in Afghanistan but they are still a culture. Bombarding can ruin a political regime but it cannot change a culture. You cannot free a woman whom is imprisoned in the burqa with a rocket. The Afghan girl needs education. She doesn’t know that she doesn’t know. She is imprisoned but she does not know that she is a prisoner of poverty, ignorance, prejudice, male chauvinism and superstition. 95% of the women and 80% of the men in Afghanistan did not have the chance to attend school even before the Taliban. The film seeks the lost key to be able to open the lock of the cultural problems of Afghanistan

 BIOGRAPHY:  

Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Born into a poor family in Tehran on May 29, 1957. He began to support his single mother since he was 8 and by the time he turned 17, he had worked as bellboy, plain worker and anything else he could find in the 13 jobs he went through.
A lower-class youngster in the poor southern districts of Tehran, Mohsen formed an under-ground Islamic militia group since he was 15 and by the time he was 17, he was shot and arrested while attempting to disarm a policeman. Expecting to remain in prison for much longer, he was released from prison shortly after the revolution in 1979. The 4½-year incarceration helped him to educate himself in various fields and gain focus on his outlooks on life and the Iranian society. This intellectual renaissance led him to distance himself from politics and find better satisfaction in Literature and the arts, especially Cinema. At this stage in his life, he strongly believed that the Iranian society suffers more from Cultural poverty than anything else.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf became a writer and filmmaker of the post-revolutionary Iran. His literary activities included research into the arts, novels, short stories and screenplays that were published in more than 20 books in Farsi, English, French, Italian, Arabic, Urdu, Kurdish and Turkish. He wrote, directed, edited and mainly produced 20 feature and short length films as well as writing screenplays and editing films for various other Iranian filmmakers. His films attended international film festivals throughout the world more than 1000 times and earned several awards from them. Mohsen Makhmalbaf has also been the subject of many films and books that were made about him and his life.
Since 1996, he temporarily abandoned his filmmaking career to teach. He formed the Makhmalbaf Film House in which he taught film to a select group of pupils including his own three children. He is currently conducting research for his upcoming film after 4 years of cinematic silence.

FESTIVALS:

1. Gotteburg International Film Festival (Sweden, 2002)
2. Fajr International Film Festival (Iran, 2002)
3. Chicago International Film Festival (USA, 2002)
4. Sao Paulo International Film Festival (Brazil, 2002)
5. Nat International Film Festival (Denmark, 2002)
6. City Page International Film Festival (USA, 2002)
7. Seattle International Film Festival (USA, 2002)
8. Pusan International Film Festival (South Korea, 2002)
9. Document ART International Film Festival (Germany, 2002)
   The prize is awarded to “artistically ambitious documentary film that uses the media creatively and convincingly”
10. Shadow International Film Festival (Netherland, 2002)
11. Double Take Documentary International Film Festival (USA, 2002)
12. Pune International Film Festival (India, 2004)