4th ECUMENICAL AWARD

The Ecumenical Jury at the 6th IFF Bratislava awarded the Afghanistan-French film

KHAKESTAR-O-KHAK (Earth and Ashes, 2004),
by director Atiq Rahimi

“Far from the way filmmakers traditionally depict war, the film focusses on humanity. Dastigir and his grandson Jasin find themselves in the middle of war sufferings. By its simple, aesthetic and attractive storytelling, the film becomes a symbol of hope despite human suffering, which is always significant in any war”

The members of the Ecumenical Jury were: Heinz Kersten (Germany), Waltraud Verlaguet (France), Juraj Drobny (Slovakia).

"Old Dastagir and his grandson Jasin get off a truck in the middle of a parched country in Afghanistan and move along the dusty road.They reach an old bridge connecting two banks of a dry riverbed. The road goes on through a desert to a mine where Jasin's father is supposed to be working.The old man is trying to find out when another truck, which could bring them there, is leaving. He wants to tell his son the news about their bombed out village; the old man and his grandson are the only survivors. The hours pass, the exhausted old man doesn't know how to handle his sorrow, and he keeps recalling the night full of terror, when the whole family died and little Jasin went deaf. He is afraid, that the news will give rise to anger and revenge in his son and so he tries to delay their arrival. He confides in people he meets on the road: the bridge guard, the kind owner of a little shop by the bridge, a mysterious veiled woman who is also waiting for someone. They are all victims of a war that goes on somewhere out of focus...."

Atiq Rahimi (1962, Kabul) left Afghanistan in 1984 for Pakistan and later was given political asylum in France, where he studied film studies at Sorbonne. Between 1992 and 1995 he made several documentaries for French TV. His debut novel Terre et cendres (Earth and Ashes) was acclaimed by the French literary critics in 2000 and four years later he made a film based on the novel. In 2002 he published his second novel Les milles maisons de reve et de la terreur (A Thousand Houses of Dreams and Terror). (Festival information)