Joy of Madness

One of the key motifs in Iranian cinema is cinema that interrogates itself. For this reason, works such as Close Up and Under the Olive Trees by Abbas Kiarostami, Salaam Cinema by Mohsen Makhmalbaf or The Mirror by Jafar Panahi symbolically focus on the making of films. The first feature film by Hana Makhmalbaf, the youngest debutant in the history of cinema, follows this tradition. The allusive and evasive boundaries between reality and fiction assume an even more emblematic value, that of the female Afghan world, just liberated from cruel and rigid impersonal Taleban rules. Autumn 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan. Hana Makhmalbaf, daughter of the well known Iranian cinematographer Moshen Makhmalbaf, follows in the footsteps of her older sister Samira, who just after the fall of the Taleban regime is searching among local people for actors and actresses for her film Panjéasr, about an Afghan girl who has decided to run for the presidency in Afghanistan. Through the objective of the digital camera of the 14-year-old Hana, the casting and location provide an opportunity to investigate Afghan society and, in particular, the aspirations of women, their insecurities and mistrust of the freedom they have just obtained once again. The first ‘making of’ that is better than the film itself – that wasn’t bad to begin with!