The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, on August 30, 2021, was one of the first major blunders of Joe Biden’s administration, and the calamitous fallout from that departure is depicted in up-close-and-personal detail by Hollywoodgate.
Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at’s illuminating and distressing documentary (July 19, in theaters) offers an insider’s peek at the first year of Taliban rule from the perspective of two of the organization’s leaders. What it paints is a damning portrait of the terrorist group as equally bloodthirsty and primitive, ill equipped for the modern world and yet now left with the resources to become more educated, formidable and deadly—both with regards to their own people and their foreign adversaries.
Nash’at visited Kabul just days after the final U.S. soldier left the country, armed with only a camera and his Afghan translator. “I came to see in whose hands this country was left,” he muses upon his arrival. The answer is a collection of combatants who appear unprepared for the task before them. Though he’s been allowed to film so long as he presents what the Taliban wants the world to see, Nash’at’s intentions aren’t propagandistic, as evidenced by the eerie music that accompanies footage of his drive through Kabul air base.
