Sahraa Karimi, the Afghan filmmaker who penned an open letter to the international film community asking to help and rescue stranded filmmakers from Afghanistan in the wake of Taliban’s takeover, will make a feature film about her experience fleeing from the country, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The film will be titled Flight from Kabul and will trace the 40 hour window from when the Taliban invaded Kabul, to Karimi’s escape with her family, first to Istanbul, and then to Kiev, in Ukraine, she said.
While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Venice International Film Festival where she was present for a panel discussion on Saturday, Karimi said, “I want to show to the world that it was a normal day, everything was normal. And then it all collapsed. In the news, people only saw the bigger story of the crowd. But there were many individual stories in those 40 hours- stories I saw myself, that I experienced.”
She added that Katayoon Shahabi, who produced her debut feature film Hava, Maryam, Ayesha, will produce Flight from Kabul along with Wanda Adamik Hrycova, a producer and president of the Slovak Film and Television Academy. Hrycova was Karimi’s key aid while escaping from Afghanistan, according to the THR’s report.
“It was difficult, and it is still difficult for me to remember that time. But last week I sat down and looked at myself in the mirror and said: ‘Sahraa are you going to be sad all your life?’ This is the reality: you have this trauma and the only way to forget this trauma, at least for a while, is to write it and to make it into a film,” she said.
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Karimi is the first female President of the Afghan Film. She discussed the status of Afghan filmmakers and the problems that they are likely to face under the new Taliban regime. She was joined by Afghan documentary filmmaker Sahra Mani, Vanja Kaludjercic (Artistic Director of the Rotterdam International Film Festival), Orwa Nyrabia (Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), Mike Downey (President of the European Film Academy), Matthijs Wouter Knol (Executive Director of the European Film Academy), along with moderator and journalist Giuliano Battiston, who has worked, travelled and researched in Afghanistan for over a decade.
Both Karimi and Mani addressed the international community, of the dangers of Taliban, and the need to help the filmmakers.
“All of you, don’t forget about Afghanistan. We have talent, we are hardworking, we have stories to tell to the world. We can be part of the world community… we tried so much. We shouldn’t be forgotten,” Karimi said.