A year ago, Kandahar (Safar e Ghandehar) would hardly cause a blip on anyone’s knowledge "radar screen." How times change. After the horrible events of September 11, Americans are far more familiar with Afghanistan and the formerly Taliban-controlled Kandahar than ever before. Iranian director Mosen Makhmalbaf’s film should rank high on your "must see" films of 2001, readily available on DVD.

Inspired by a true story, Kandahar feels remarkably like a documentary—the actors are so natural that reality and fiction blend together seamlessly. In fact, the film serves as a quasi documentary because many of the “actors” are just playing themselves—numerous natives with limbs blown off play cameos. Plus, the story parallels the real life plight of the central star, Niloufar Pazira, a native born Afgan working as a journalist, who pleaded with filmmaker Makhmalbaf (The Cyclist, The Silence ) to help her get inside Taliban controlled Afghanistan to seek a childhood friend. Although the Iranian director couldn’t help her, he recognized a great story and Kandahar took form.

The story is simple enough—native Afghan, Nafas living free in Canada receives a letter from her sister in Kandahar. After suffering from injuries resulting from a landmine, she cannot bear her tortured existence and swears to commit suicide at the next solar eclipse, just three days away. Nafas takes on a Mission Impossible task of travelling through Taliban territory to reach her sister.

Nafas’ journey takes on a mythological rendering framed in bookended images of a total eclipse—the symbolism is self-evident. Dangers akin to Odysseus take place over the stark and barren high desert plateaus of the region, especially considering the plight of women in Afghanistan—like a journey to the very bowels of Hell. How do you manage in such a place when you don’t know anyone? Who can you trust?

Along the way are Iranians too fearful to venture into Kandahar, others intent only on material gain, and one soul who proves helpful. He appears at the most opportune time, just after Nafas (disguised as a fourth wife in traditional burqa to hide her fair features) has been abandoned by an Iranian family after being robbed. Sheep have a better chance of survival than a single woman in Afghanistan, but a rejected urchin from a fundamentalist Islamic school brings the sick Nafas to a village doctor.

Ironically, the helpful doctor turns out to be an American Black Muslim who had idealistically migrated to Afghanistan to help the rebels fight the Russians. He once thought that this was a place where he could practice civil rights struggles on his own terms, only to discover that the biggest needs of the people are fighting famine and malnutrition. To keep his doctoral practice, he must hide his true identity from the Taliban.

The film proceeds at a leisurely pace despite the plight of Nafas—her sister has only three days to live. Some of the more surreal scenes occur at the Red Cross prosthesis clinic, where nurses must haggle with the natives over limbs and arms, knowing that certain regular customers are only looking for items to hock for money. An amazing sequence shows a hoard of one-legged Afghans race after sets of prosthetic legs being parachuted from helicopters—without the serious tone this desperate, competitive three-legged race could fit into a Monty Python movie. Placed as it is, Makhmalbaf communicates eloquently the horrors of Afghan native life, where children are taught to leave dolls along, lest they explode and blast away a limb.

What would it take for these people to move closer to the 21st century? From the indicators in the haunting Kandahar, those prospects look very dim. Despite the recent military victories over the Taliban, the road to progress in this backward country will continue to be very harsh and difficult. As the doctor says about one sick woman, "These people don’t need a doctor; they need a baker." How can these people possibly care about what kind of government they want when many are destitute and starving?

This is one arthouse film that all Americans should seek out to gain a better understanding about a people once totally ignored, until that horrible September day. Nafas’ quest for Kandahar is anything but a journey to the Emerald City of Oz—more like a dangerous journey into the distant past and into the darkest regions of ignorance.