For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns 
to Afghanistan 
Rahat Imran, University College Cork 
imran.rahat@ucc.ie 

 

Abstract 
Appropriating relevant elements from Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy’s formulation of  an ‘Accented 
Cinema’ (2001) that addresses various aspects of diasporic filmmaking and filmmakers ‘situated in the 
interstices of social formations and cinematic practices’ (4) as guiding tropes for analysis, this paper focuses 
on the depiction of the post-Taliban period through a contextual and critical reading of Nelofer Pazira’s first 
documentary film Return to Kandahar (2003) and her debut feature film Act of Dishonour (2009) on the topic 
of 'honour-killing.' The paper examines how these films portray ‘accented’ images captured and relayed by a 
diaspora Afghan woman filmmaker to appeal to distant and unversed Western/foreign audiences and film 
festivals. In addition to Naficy's formulation of the 'accented cinema', I argue that Pazira uses a formulaic accent 
and variances (also to be read as her emphases) in her depictions that are aimed specifically at appealing to 
Western audiences. 
Keywords: Afghanistan; women filmmakers; accented cinema; diaspora; Taliban; 'War on Terror'; gender; 
honour-killing; religious fundamentalism 

 

 
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. 

 
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part  

of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Volume 11.1 (2023)  |  ISSN 2158-8724 (online)  |  DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463  |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 

http://www.library.pitt.edu/
http://www.pitt.edu/
http://www.library.pitt.edu/articles/digpubtype/index.html
http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressIndex.aspx


            CINEJ Cinema Journal: For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan  

Volume 11.1 (2023)  |  ISSN 2158-8724 (online)  |  DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
       116 

For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns 

to Afghanistan  

Rahat Imran 

 

Introduction 

 The devastation wreaked during the Soviet invasion and the jihadist Mujahideen era (1979-

1989); the ultra-puritanical Taliban regime (1996-2001); and the US-led so-called ‘War on Terror’ 

(2001), and US occupation and continued presence (2001-2021) have remained key periods for 

foreign media and filmic interest in Afghanistan.  

In the absence of an indigenous Afghan film industry that had been destroyed during decades 

of conflict and the ultra-orthodox and authoritarian Taliban rule (Nasr, 2020), it was largely 

Iranian, Pakistani, and Afghan diaspora filmmakers, significantly young women, who began to 

focus on  the plight of Afghan women in particular, gaining wide international recognition at film 

festivals.1 One such name was the Canada-based Nelofer Pazira, a journalist who turned filmmaker 

as she visited her native country to film her debut documentary. 

Appropriating relevant elements from Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy’s formulation of  an 

‘accented cinema’ (2001) that addresses various aspects of diasporic filmmaking and filmmakers 

‘situated in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices’ (4) as guiding tropes for 

analysis, this paper focuses on the depiction of the post-Taliban period through a contextual and 

critical analysis of Pazira’s first documentary film Return to Kandahar (2003) and her debut 

feature film Act of Dishonour (2010) on the topic of 'honour-killing.'2 A close reading of both films 

tracks and examines how they portray what I argue is a shrewdly crafted  formulaic accent to 

capture and relay images by a diaspora Afghan woman filmmaker to appeal to distant and unversed 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
117 

Western audiences and film festivals. I argue that  Pazira's formulaic accent and variances (also to 

be read as her emphases) at various points in her filmic depictions are aimed at distancing herself 

from her native subjects, and appealing to Western audiences as a liberated and progressive 

'Afghan-Canadian' woman who shares their shock and disbelief at the backwardness of her country 

of origin. Hence, Pazira aims to secure their trust and reliance on her account as a ‘native 

informant’ who is also on the same page as her target viewers, particularly regarding women's 

freedoms, while overlooking the socio-cultural, historical, class, and political ground realities 

applicable to Afghan women’s predicament, and also contrast with her own privilege and subject 

position as an Afghan Muslim woman now safely residing in Canada.  

Correspondingly, through a contextual reading of both films I explore if it is  the quality of 

Pazira’s filmic portrayals or, rather, her  formulaic accent and representations and the  novelty of 

the filmmaker and her subjects (i.e. Afghanistan/war-torn country; ‘oppressed’ Muslim women; 

Muslim/minority woman filmmaker; issues of patriarchal domination; burqa/veiling; honour; 

Islamic fundamentalism) that serve as the impetus for the production and success of her films, that 

garnered them international acclaim, and Pazira a film career.  In conclusion, how is quality 

compromised when exoticized novelty dominates to attract foreign funding, screening 

opportunities, inclusion at film festivals, and recognition and popularity among remote and 

uninitiated audiences? 

I begin with a discussion of relevant perspectives  from Hamid Naficy’s formulation of the 

‘accented cinema’ that lays the premise for a critical analysis of Nelofer  Pazira’s films, Return to 

Kandahar and Act of Dishonour. I argue that capitalizing on what Naficy (2001) defines as an 

‘opportunistic identity politics’ (269), Pazira uses her accented subject position to develop a 

formulaic accent  and emphases that permeate her return journeys to Afghanistan in both films. 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
118 

Further, a brief historical background to the troubled history of Afghanistan during the Taliban era 

and the post-9/11 US-led so-called 'War on Terror' contextualizes the transformations that took 

place in the Afghan society, particularly the erosion of women's rights and freedoms under the 

authoritarian regime. Leading on, a discussion of  the surge in media interest in the plight of 

Afghan women in particular, and the hype surrounding US military intervention as a significant 

justification for their liberation, is followed by a contextual examination of Pazira's two films to 

locate her formulaic accent. Additionally, the paper draws attention to Pazira's formulaic and 

exoticized filmic depictions as pre-packaged to appeal to Western (unversed/distant) audiences 

and film festivals in particular, indicating their allure as novelty over quality. A viewing of Pazira’s 

films is strongly suggested to follow the arguments in this paper.   

Hamid Naficy’s Framework of the ‘Accented Cinema’ 

Hamid Naficy identifies ‘accented cinemas’ (2001) as those representing multiple aspects of 

portrayals, including ‘subject matter and themes that involve journeying, historicity, identity, and 

displacement… and inscription of the biographical, social, and cinematic (dis)location of the 

filmmakers’ (4). He points to their diaspora makers as ‘“situated but universal figures” who work 

in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices’ (10). Naficy elaborates further on 

diaspora filmmakers:  

A majority are from Third World and postcolonial countries (or from the global South) 
who since the 1960s have relocated to northern cosmopolitan centers where they exist in a 
state of tension and dissension with both their original and their current homes. By and 
large, they operate independently, outside the studio system or the mainstream film 
industries, using interstitial and collective modes of production that critique those entities. 
As a result, they are presumed to be more prone to the tensions of marginality and 
difference. (10)  



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
119 

Hence, for a critical analysis of her filmic representations, it is important to consider Pazira's own 

'self-inscription', location, and  positioning as reflected within her films and her exilic/refugee 

experience of leaving Afghanistan with her parents at an early age that speaks of circumstantial 

displacement from her roots to a safe life and space that guarantees individual freedom and 

independence in the West (Canada). Her physical displacement places her ethnicity and identity 

within the Afghan Diaspora, leading to multiple identities and her 'interstitial location' as a 

filmmaker  whereby she claims the agency to speak to her intended Western audience as an 

Afghan-Canadian (native/diaspora/returnee) (Naficy, 2001: 20). In this case, through  two separate 

filmic journeys to Afghanistan, navigating and criss-crossing between a ‘homecoming’, a ‘border-

crossing’  and ‘identity crossing’ (222) through different modes of performativity (documentary 

and feature). 

The commonalities in Pazira's films under discussion reflect shades of all three aspects of 

'accented cinema' that Naficy draws attention to: 'It is helpful, when mapping the accented cinema, 

to differentiate three types of film that constitute it: exilic, diasporic, and ethnic.' (2001:11). 

However, as Naficy incisively elaborates further, these positions can be fluid:  

Diaspora, exile, and ethnicity are not steady states; rather, they are fluid processes that under 
certain circumstances may transform into one another and beyond. There is also no direct 
and predetermined progression from exile to ethnicity, although dominant ideological and 
economic apparatuses tend to favor an assimilationist trajectory—from exile to diaspora to 
ethnic to citizen to consumer. (17)  

Although she may make the above fluid, hybridized and stage-wise journey, Pazira is neither an 

exilic nor émigré filmmaker. One must consider that Pazira was raised as an immigrant to parents 

who had migrated/sought refuge/found exile in the West and is herself not an 'exilic' filmmaker. 

Instead, she can be seen as a returnee rather than an 'insider' (Minh-ha, 1991: 81), who launched 

her filmmaking career using her country of origin at an opportune period in terms of the post-9/11 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
120 

media interest in Afghanistan's troubled history. Hence, appropriating an 'opportunistic identity 

politics’ (Naficy, 2001: 269), Pazira’s development of a formulaic accent and emphases is clearly 

shaped to play her filmic journeys and border-crossings to Western eyes that now constitute her 

main target audiences. 

While Naficy (2001) points out that 'accented films are personal and unique, like fingerprints, 

because they are both authorial and autobiographical’(34), and that 'exilic and diasporic accent 

permeates the film's deep structure: its narrative, visual style, characters, subject matter, theme, 

and plot’ (23), I argue that Return to Kandahar is deeply reflective of an authorial style that hinges 

on a formulaic approach that centers primarily on the topicality of post-9/11 Afghanistan and 

Western media interest wedded to the filmmaker's own exoticized position as a Muslim Afghan 

woman, while Act of Dishonour is immersed in perpetuating exoticism and a superficial  pathos 

despite its horrific topic of honour-killing.  

I begin with a brief historical background to the fundamentalist Taliban period in Afghanistan 

that transformed the country’s socio-political landscape, and the post-9/11Western media interest 

in the country that served as the backdrop for the emergence of Afghan diaspora women 

filmmakers such as Nelofer Pazira.  

 

Historical background to the Taliban rule in Afghanistan 

For decades now since the late 1970s Afghanistan has remained in a state of multiple socio-

political transitions, and held hostage to a host of factors that have impacted its development and 

progress: foreign invasions and military interventions (Soviet-US Mujahideen era 1979-1989); 

internal strife and political instability; civil war; religious fundamentalist forces vying for state 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
121 

control; imposition of rigid Islamic Sharia laws; the insurgence of jihadist and extremist ideologies 

(Taliban regime 1996-2001); and the post  9/11 US-led so-called ‘War on Terror’ (2001) (Paracha 

2018). And most recently, the re-emergence of a Taliban leadership following the US withdrawal 

on August 15, 2021 (Dawn 2021). Significant  common factors under these turbulent phases have 

remained the devastation of the country’s socio-cultural life, subjugation of women, mass internal 

displacement, forced migration, and the resultant refugee exodus of its population that also saw 

the emergence of Afghan-populated refugee camps in neighbouring Pakistan in particular (Ruiz 

2002).  

The ‘Taliban’, literally meaning ‘students’ trained in Islamic religious seminaries known as 

madrasas (pl. madaris) (Hussain, 2007: 78),  usurped control after executing the deposed Soviet-

backed President, Dr. Mohammad Najibullah (1986-1992), hanging him in the main public square 

in Kabul to enforce their rule (Griffin, 2001: 1). Led by Mullah Mohammad Omar as their elected 

Amir-ul-Momineen (Leader of the Faithful), the Taliban proceeded to declare Afghanistan as a 

‘completely Islamic state’ after the capture of the capital city of Kabul, proclaiming it as the 

‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA)’ (Ibrahimi, 2017: 947).  

The first victims of the new Taliban-led puritanical Islamic order and imposition of rigid 

Sharia laws in Afghanistan were women, who found their freedoms wholly curtailed under the 

Taliban’s newly enforced national religious identity (Skaine, 2007: 61). Led by an extremist 

ideology, fiercely defended by Muslim fundamentalist pockets on the pretext of piety and Islamic 

identity, as the first symbol of their puritan rule the authoritarian Taliban regime vanquished 

women's social and legal status as equal citizens. Espousing militant anti-West Al Qaida 

ideologies, the Taliban imposed stern Islamic Sharia laws and gender-discriminatory practices 

which included public executions and stoning to death for alleged ‘sex-crimes’ (Marsden, 1998: 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
122 

43). The very first fatwa,3 a harsh religious edict issued on Radio Kabul, renamed ‘Voice of 

Sharia,’ announced a strict ‘Islamic’ dress code for women that enforced the wearing of the burqa, 

while forbidding them to go out to work, or even to go out alone without a male chaperone.4 The 

edict brought to a standstill not only the livelihood of the majority of the female workforce but 

also had a crippling effect on the country’s educational and healthcare system as women students, 

teachers, and other employees suddenly found themselves out of a job  and the right to pursue their 

professions (Griffin, 2001: 5). The rigid ‘Taliban laws’ imposed in Afghanistan included even a 

ban on white socks, perceived as an insult to the white Taliban banner, and were inclusive enough 

to place a ban on caged birds (Wahab, 2007: 218). 

The ‘War on Terror’ and Media Interest in Afghan Women  

Afghanistan, a country of scarce interest, too remote to matter, too unimportant to learn about, too 

backward to notice, for the West in particular, was again thrust into global limelight, albeit for 

horrific reasons: the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on US soil. The global scenario had changed 

forever, accelerating ‘terrorism’ as a field of study as never before with Afghanistan at the heart 

of it.  

The al-Qaida-ordered terrorist attacks in the US, masterminded by its Saudi chief Osama bin 

Ladin, believed to be sheltered  by the Taliban regime in  Afghanistan, prompted the then US 

President George W. Bush to launch the so-called ‘War on Terror’ as decisive military action to 

oust the Taliban government. The US-led massive air-strikes and indiscriminate attacks initiated 

by coalition forces in October 2001 saw the toppling of  the Taliban regime in December 2001, 

leaving behind chaotic conditions, large-scale civilian deaths, and countrywide destruction in an 

already war-ravaged country grappling for normalcy (Jackson, 2009).5  Supported by new 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
123 

technologies and growing numbers in satellite networks,  images of devastation caused by the ‘War 

on Terror’ and its aftermath dominated world media in the 2000s as 24/7 news coverage by TV 

channels such as CNN, FOX, BBC, and Al Jazeera flashed images of the deadly conflict that led 

to mass civilian casualties, and internal displacements of the Afghan population.6 Philip Mosley 

(2004) elaborates on the evolving post-9/11 media scene:   

The majority of Americans neither knew nor cared much about Afghanistan before the 

horrifying events of September 11, 2001. Thereafter they knew and for the most part cared 

considerably more, while the mass media quickly moved to saturation coverage in the aftermath 

of the disaster. Once American reprisals began against the accused terrorist group in Afghanistan 

and the regime that had harbored it, viewers soon grew familiar in word and image with such 

names as al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Northern Alliance, Kabul, Tora Bora, and 

Kandahar. For those curious to discover more about the Afghan situation and its broader context, 

however, there was little material available beyond the often predictable media discourse and a 

small number of specialized documentaries. (178)  

To validate US attacks, President Bush encouraged an 'us' and 'them' confrontation, one that 

Sedef Arat-Koc (2002) explains as '"them" as victims of a "barbaric" culture, and "us" not just as 

liberated subjects of a civilized world but also as "saviours" of victims of culture’(55). The visual 

projection of Afghan women as imprisoned behind the burqa was to become synonymous with 

oppression and serve as fodder for Western media’s obsession to validate the US-led war, while 

mounting Afghan civilian casualties as a result of indiscriminate US-led bombardments were 

strategically justified as part of collateral damage.7   

 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
124 

A neat media marketing formula that emerged to justify US and allied attacks became: war, 

women, and oppression.8 Lila Abu-Lughod (2013) comments that the US First Lady’s  ‘speech 

enlisted women to justify American military intervention in Afghanistan and to make a case for 

the War on Terror of which it was a part’ (32). The single most saleable focus became the ‘Afghan 

woman’, a nameless, faceless creature conveniently best defined by her oppression, helplessness, 

and gendered-subjugation, walled behind a burqa, in dire need of Western help to be ‘saved’ from 

her own (27). Abu-Lughod notes: 

Instead of questions that might lead to the examination of internal political struggles among 
groups in Afghanistan, or of global interconnections between Afghanistan and other nation-
states, we were offered ones that worked to artificially divide the world into separate 
spheres—re-creating an imaginative geography of West versus East, us versus Muslims, 
cultures in which first ladies give speeches versus others in which women shuffle around 
silently in burqas. (32) 

 

No doubt, burqa, veil, chador,9 Sharia laws, and honour had fast become saleable  buzzwords that 

all pointed to the many facets of the same story of Afghan women’s oppression, ringing an alarm 

for urgent help to save them. Ratna Kapur (2002) elaborates on the essentialist view of the veiled 

Muslim woman as an oppressed being in need of rescue:  

The image of the veiled woman has come to inhabit our imaginations in ways that are 

totalizing of the culture and its treatment of women. This image is nearly always simplistic as well 

as a misrepresentation of the practice as a subordinating practice that typifies Islam and its 

degrading treatment of women. It is invoked as a cultural artifact to distinguish us from them, to 

justify military or feminist interventions that could further aggravate rather than alleviate the 

situation of women...One must read the imposition of the veil in the context of the Taliban in the 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
125 

broader context of the denial of rights to women and men under an oppressive non-democratic 

regime. Conformity is a matter of survival in a political context where dissent means death. (217-

218)  

As the very  image of the burqa-clad Afghan woman became her oppressed ‘life story’, an 

‘imported’ self-serving media opportunism in the guise of feminism and activism emerged to 

choose sides in the  ‘Bush rhetoric of “good” versus “evil”’ (Kapur, 2002: 213), flashing their 

impoverished images in the media on the pretext of endorsing their gender rights. Aspiring 

filmmakers were no exception.10 

Notably, two young female journalists of Afghan descent who launched their filmmaking 

careers during this period were Saira Shah (Channel 4 UK), and Nelofer Pazira (Canadian 

Broadcasting Corporation/CBC). The topicality of Afghanistan offered a host of critical and 

sensational  issues for them to address, particularly the novelty of depicting the impact of religious 

extremism and Sharia laws on women---a topic that appealed to Western funding agencies, 

commissioning networks, and film festival circuits at the time, while the Afghan population 

continued to pay the price in loss of life and property, displacement, and physical and economic 

devastation.11 These Afghan diaspora women filmmakers, with roots in a conservative  Islamic 

society and culture, exuded an exotic flavour made all the more appealing  to Western donors and 

audiences through their own visual participation in navigating their expository journeys in the 

dangerous war-zone territories depicted in their films. Their fluency in the local language and head 

coverings and attire while on Afghan territory set them apart, adding further to their saleable appeal 

for funders and audiences alike. Shock-value seemed a sufficient operative strategy, the actual 

quality of their films, and their shifting, self-serving accents notwithstanding. The novelty of 

attractive young Afghan Muslim women, raised as refugees in the West, returning and risking their 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
126 

lives to capture what they believed to be crucial aspects of their ravaged homeland for their 

intended and unversed Western viewers guaranteed funding, screenings, and success,  bestowing 

their work with a seal of authenticity and agency commonly associated with natives as 'insiders.' 

Largely catering to Western audience expectations, a common focus for these filmmakers 

remained Afghan women’s issues, be it the burqa and veiling, cultural notions of honour, Muslim 

religious identity, or their marginalized social and legal status.  In particular, riding on novelty, 

Nelofer Pazira  was to fashion her ‘accented’ subject position  as a displaced/refugee/diaspora 

Afghan Muslim woman into a self-serving  formulaic accent as she used these multiple aspects of 

her identity to authenticate and self/exoticize her filmic characters. Given the aforementioned 

factors, the topicality  of the intense global media attention on the plight of women during the 

Afghan conflict paved the way for Pazira to avail the timely opportunity to launch and support her 

nascent acting and filmmaking career . 

Interestingly, it was also in 2001 that the filmic portrayal of Afghanistan began to evolve as 

renowned Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s biographical film Kandahar (2001), made 

daringly during the Taliban rule, sought to present an authentic image of the country through its 

neo-realist treatment. Based on the journey of an Afghan-Canadian woman, Nafas  (played by 

Nelofer Pazira), the film follows her taking a risky, and somewhat incredulous, journey across the 

Iran-Afghanistan border to reach Kandahar in Afghanistan, the stronghold of the Taliban at the 

time,  to locate a childhood female friend, Dyana, from whom she had received a letter in 1998 

saying that she plans to commit suicide on the day of the last solar eclipse of the year.12 

 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
127 

Makhmalbaf’s filmic dramatization, employing a cast of local non-actors,  offered a real-life 

portrayal of the tremendously harsh and precarious living conditions in Afghanistan, its population 

beset by a host of dangerous and hazardous factors as a consequence of years of conflict and war 

on its soil: landmines, destruction, poverty, corruption, want, death, disease, and lawlessness.13 

The film  ends with Nafas unable to reach Kandahar to locate her friend.  

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, Kandahar, carrying a name that was already 

well-known by then (as the birthplace of the Taliban movement) to global media audiences through 

war-coverage of Afghanistan, won the Prize of the Ecunemical Jury from the World Council of 

Churches in 2001, and went on to collect many others including the Federico Fellini Medal from 

UNESCO in Paris the same year. The timing of the film’s release in 2001 and the 9/11/2001 

terrorist attacks in the US coincided to bring unexpected global recognition to the topicality of 

Makhmalbaf’s film. 

The depictions in Makhmalbafs’ film, and the international recognition and success it 

garnered,  set a filmic trend for exploring the devastation and deterioration of civilian life in 

Afghanistan, particularly the condition of women under the Taliban rule and in refugee camps in 

Pakistan and Iran.14  

Capitalizing  on the success of her role in Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar that, amongst other  

honours,  was also chosen as 'one of the top 100 best movies in the history of cinema by “Time” 

magazine' (Wiacek, 2020: 61), Nelofer Pazira followed with an  attempt to emulate his  film’s 

positive reception with her debut documentary ingeniously  titled Return to Kandahar (2003)---a 

timely and shrewd move no doubt as the title resonated with film festivals and audiences already 

familiar with Makhmalbaf's acclaimed film.  

 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
128 

Pazira, now an Afghan-Canadian journalist, returned to her country of origin to begin her 

filmmaking career on the pretext of resuming her search for Dyana.  As a seeming sequel of sorts 

to the protagonist's intent in Makhmalbaf's feature film Kandahar, viewers are led to anticipate 

Pazira's success in her goal this time in her documentary film, Return to Kandahar. While the 

name of her debut venture also invokes publicity by an indirect mention of her association to the 

international success of Makhmalbaf's film, any similarities between the two filmmakers end with 

'Kandahar' in the title. What begins to emerge is a formulaic accent and emphases that speaks 

specifically to Western audiences.  

 

Return to Kandahar (2003) 

According to the film’s intertitles, Nelofer Pazira’s journey to Afghanistan in Return to Kandahar 

takes place seven months after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Her mission is yet again to 

trace her friend, Dyana, this time in the city of  Mazar-e-Sharif, with whom she had stayed in 

contact through letters over the years.  

We see Pazira travel the breadth of Afghanistan, filling in the background to her friendship with 

Dyana  in voiceover while testimonial  'whisperings to the Western audience’ (Usamah, 2008: 63) 

about the various aspects of her reflections, objectives, and experiences during her travel route are 

significantly prompted intermittently by her Canadian co-director Paul Jay who accompanies her.15 

As a strategy, Pazira places a continuous emphasis on the burqa, the most recognizable visual 

symbol of Afghan women’s oppression relayed by the Western media at the time, while leaving 

herself free of a full head-covering to demarcate and establish her own  ‘modernity’ and liberated 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
129 

position for her intended audiences. Hence from the very outset, the filmmaker consciously 

establishes her ‘accented’ position (Naficy 2001: 10). 

Beginning her homecoming journey in the capital city of Kabul, Pazira visits her childhood home, 

school, and neighbourhoods all of which have now transformed into sights of desolation and 

poverty and stand testimony to decades of war and neglect. As the film progresses, we see that not 

much has changed for the general population. Images of burqa-clad women, crippled men on 

crutches, crowds of bearded men in the streets, impoverished children, and general despondence 

and neglect remain a constant feature from Makhmalbaf’s earlier film, Kandahar. However,  he 

had presented such scenes with a depth of feeling and purpose to draw attention to the ravaging 

aftermath of the armed conflict heaped on one of the poorest nations in the world that began with 

hostilities between two superpowers during the Mujahideen era.  

In Return to Kandahar, what is new is Pazira’s slow-paced and superficial attempt at making a 

'participatory' and 'expository' (Nichols, 2010: 31) documentary film that is loosely based on 

occasional references to personal experiences that appear insignificant compared to the widescale 

destruction Afghanistan is reeling under. Pazira recounts a sketchy history of conflict in 

Afghanistan in her heavily accented English, thereby immediately situating her ‘border-crossing’ 

position (Naficy 2001: 277) as a native outsider-returnee. She moves from Kabul, to Kandahar, to 

Mazar-e-Sharif and back to Kabul with the somewhat surprising ease and amusement of a tourist 

taking in the sights and history and narrating them to the viewers rather than a native returning 

home (in this case also with a mission) in a land that is still struggling to count the number of 

remaining landmines and related casualties.   

Herself the daughter of a well-to-do doctor, Pazira tells us her family fled from Afghanistan to 

Pakistan  in 1989 during the US-backed anti-Soviet Mujahideen era. To draw attention to aspects 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
130 

of her ‘exilic, diasporic and ethnic location’ (Naficy 2001: 11) and highlight the changes since the 

filmmaker's departure, the film is interspersed with clips  and stills of life in a pre-Taliban 

Afghanistan that depict a liberal past when young women and men, dressed in Western clothes, 

mixed freely without fear. Pazira comments: 'When Dyana and I walked these roads, tradition and 

modernity lived more in harmony.' Her intent here seems to be to identify with ‘modernity’ as a 

Western, and thereby superior, mode of living, while 'tradition' is  equated with conservatism and 

backwardness. 

As Pazira rolls out a paltry background to the political transformations that led to grave changes 

and decades of conflict in Afghanistan, one wonders at her over-simplification of historical 

perspectives, particularly coming from a journalist. Speaking of the 'fanaticism' of the Mujahideen 

era, Pazira tells her audience quite plainly: 'I began to question why the Americans were supporting 

such extreme forces. I came to realize that the West that we thought wanted our  freedom, was 

only interested in the victory in the Cold War. And then the world abandoned Afghanistan.' We 

see the juxtaposition of random archival images and stills of a relatively free Afghan society, with 

Pazira and her family as testimony of a liberal past against clips of bearded fighters emblematic of 

the Taliban. These oppositional and poorly assembled depictions set the tone for Pazira’s  

formulaic accent and representations for a Western audience within the first ten minutes of her 

filmic journey, just as her patronizing compassion towards the Afghans is tilted towards Western 

expectations, demonstrating  a self-serving, formulaic activism.   

Her head barely covered as would be expected of an Afghan woman in a public place at the time,  

Pazira reminisces about the now missing billboards of 'Madonna and Michael Jackson' that she 

and Dyana had cherished as symbols of the 'West' in a busy street junction. If there remained any 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
131 

doubts regarding her recourse to  ‘opportunistic identity politics’ (Naficy 2001: 269), Pazira’s 

formulaic accent and emphases are clear now: She is ultra-conscious about differentiating and 

maintaining her identity as aligned with Western freedoms and culture, while using her Afghan 

heritage as a backdrop to support her timely film production that is carefully shaped as a poignant, 

exoticized, and somewhat thrilling storyline for shock value (searching for a childhood friend and 

saving her from committing suicide in a hostile environment) and appeal for distant audiences and 

inclusion at film festivals.  

Visiting her old school, Pazira finds it in poor condition with classrooms without chairs and tables,  

and a library devoid of books. Finding schoolgirls clad in  burqas, Pazira comments that at the 

time when she was a student there it was seen as an 'insult to education itself '  to wear a burqa to 

school, and doing so would have been considered 'the joke of the century'. As we are to see, Pazira's 

focus on the  burqa as an imprisoning and shackling garment is to remain a symbolic equation 

with women's oppression and portrayal of savage conditions set in motion by the Taliban. The 

recurring references to the burqa and her own distancing from, and disapproval of, the garment 

are in tandem with the post-9/11 media discourse and aimed at the expectations of Western 

audiences. It is quite another matter that, factually speaking, wearing the burqa, not only in 

Afghanistan but also other countries in South Asia (e.g. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), has been a 

common conventional and voluntary practice among conservative Muslim women regardless of 

class and political conditions.  Lila Abu-Lughod (2013) elaborates:  

First, it should be recalled that the Taliban did not invent the burqa. It was the local form of 

covering that Pashtun women in one region wore when they went out. The Pashtun are one of 

several ethnic groups in Afghanistan and the burqa was one of many forms of covering in the 

subcontinent and Southwest Asia that had developed as a convention for symbolizing women’s 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
132 

modesty or respectability. The burqa, like some other forms of cover has, in many settings, marked 

the symbolic separation of men’s and women’s domains, part of the general association of women 

with family and home rather than public spaces where strangers mingle. (35)  

Repeating the Taliban's rigid gender-discriminatory policies  from one of Dyana's old letters, 

written in 1996 after the Taliban had captured Kabul, Pazira puts on a show of dismay, telling the 

viewers that she needs to go to the Islamic movement's birthplace, Kandahar, to 'better understand 

the Taliban', and their fundamentalist ideology and treatment of women.16 However, after her 

arrival in Kandahar, facilitated by a secure landing in a military plane at the US Air Force Airbase, 

she displays an attitude more akin to a touristic stance that focuses on the cultural history of the 

city, seen as a place that once symbolized spirituality, music, and poetry, rather than any serious 

and informed attempt to delve into the historical and geo-political aspects and fundamentalist 

forces impacting and vying for control of Afghanistan. The singular image of the fluttering US 

flag at the air base compels one to ponder the impact of the American occupation, its vested 

interests, and the physical devastation of a country now suddenly at the heart of Western media 

interest.  Pazira's self-serving formulaic accent continues to be on target as she depicts herself as 

being on the right side of the law, human rights, women's  liberation and freedom, and as a feminist, 

arguably for the benefit of her Western funders and audiences and the international film exhibition 

circuit.  

By now, the initial interest in the search for Dyana seems to have faded, as the events of  9/11 gain 

importance in the film. Pazira goes as far as contrasting the dusty and non-descript Kandahar 

landscape with the more pleasant greenery in her Canadian home city of Ottawa. Her comments 

shed light on her own divided identity and 'interstitial’ (Naficy 2001: 10) positioning not only in 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
133 

the film, but also as an Afghan-Canadian subject whose trite understanding of the historical, 

regional, and religio-political factors impacting and shaping the future of Afghanistan are  coloured 

largely by the post-9/11 Western media depictions and discourses legitimizing the ’War on Terror’ 

at the time. One is  reminded of Vietnamese-American film scholar and filmmaker  Trinh T. Minh 

Ha's critique of the falsified and glorifying American media coverage of the Vietnam War in the 

1970s, otherwise hailed by historians as a humiliating defeat for the superpower (Minh-ha, 

1991:100-101).  A US defeat that is ironically likened by world media to its embarrassingly  

hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan after waging and losing its longest war that stretched for 20 

years, dubbed by President Joe Biden as the 'Forever War’ (Sanger, 2021). 

On her way to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Pazira admits to having no address or clue where to find 

Dyana. Instead, her focus turns to memories of the Mazar-e-Sharif region as a place for 'picnics', 

'going to the movies’, and ‘having lots of fun’. Although a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

headed by a war-lord, General Dostum, yields Pazira no help in tracing her friend, what is striking 

during this encounter is Pazira’s own appearance, with her head uncovered and her hair flowing 

in the breeze, that draws attention to her Western visitor/outsider position despite her fluent 

conversation in the local language, Dari. A meeting between a notorious warlord in a Western suit 

and an attractive diasporic Afghan woman from Canada who appears free from the constraints of 

conventional apparel/burqa presents a classic mix of  exoticism and  orientalism,  made all the 

more  palpable in the intensely volatile setting of Dostum’s highly fortified palatial bastion. Here, 

Pazira’s physical appearance in a potentially dangerous setting underpins the overt accent placed 

on her own femininity and vulnerability, arguably for her target audiences in the West who would 

perceive the  meeting as a mark of her defiant courage and earnestness to find her childhood friend 

and avert her suicide, regardless of how improbable such a task may be in a lawless and war-

ravaged country, without even an address to guide the filmmaker’s search.   



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
134 

 

Looking at burqa-clad women on the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif, wondering which ones may be 

refugees from Kabul, Pazira comments: 'Should I just go and ask her or should I just pull her burqa 

off? Any one of these women could be Dyana.' However, the only veil she successfully manages 

to pull off is from her own superficial understanding of her environment and its  socio-political 

and gender-specific cultural parameters. Usamah Ansari (2008) elaborates: 

And with imperialism now framed within the rubric of a ‘war on terror,’ Nelofer Pazira also 

becomes the native informant: the classic anthropological sidekick who tells her faithful audience 

all about the novel idiosyncrasies of her ‘traditional’ society while inviting various interventionist 

discourses. She has a ‘right’ to pull off a woman’s burqa because she is the native viceroy; she 

knows what is best for them because she is one of them, and since she is also embedded in the 

West and is intelligible to the Western audience, her statement effectively confirms common 

notions about Islam as patriarchal in ways not shared in Western traditions. (49) 

With a partially covered head as a token of association with her native status in one of the most 

conservative societies in the world, Pazira sits herself down on the street to chat with a group of 

burqa-clad female vendors who apprise her about the impact of the war on their condition of life 

and the consequences of internal displacement.  Here, Pazira’s own appearance as a non-burqa-

clad young woman, who is otherwise identifiable as one of the local women through her medium 

of communication (Dari), draws up a sharp contrast signifying her consciously staged self-

positioning as an outsider and distanced 'native informant' speaking to a Western audience. This 

contrast further points to the burqa-clad local women’s actual physical view, as well as to their 

world-view, both of which are framed by the limited space afforded by the mesh in their head-to-



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
135 

toe coverings. Yet again, Pazira makes it a point to draw the line between herself and the 

worldview afforded by her new hyphenated diasporic identity, and the Afghan natives she 

otherwise claims the agency to identify with. This time, it is the stark differences displayed through 

physical appearances on both sides that highlight and  communicate Pazira's ‘accented’ (Naficy 

2001)  and Westernized position, one that also guarantees her a safe return to the West: hers is now 

a privileged diasporic and hyphenated position that allows for an unrestricted vision that is free 

from the forcibly regulated and limited view of the local Afghan women who can only peer from 

behind their burqa-mesh.  

Pazira’s supposedly earnest visit to the Tasadi Eight refugee camp, populated by internally 

displaced Afghans living in dismal conditions in mud huts, among whom, we are told, are highly 

educated individuals ('PhD's and MAs') reduced to manual labour and beggary for survival, is 

nothing short of absurd: she goes from door-to-door in the camp to locate her friend with a 

Canadian film crew in tow.  Her next stop is at the Balkh University to see if Dyana may have 

been registered there. Her interaction with female students include questions about their views on 

the political environment, educational facilities and, invariably, on wearing the burqa to university. 

As the filming continues, we see Pazira get into a heated argument with male students who 

question her agency to film Afghan girls for 'foreign  TV', terming it contrary to Afghan 'culture' 

and 'honour.' Perhaps for the first time Pazira displays any level of passion and genuine expression 

as she argues back in favour of the girls and their right to make an independent choice to be 

interviewed, while declaring her own identity:  'I am a Muslim and an Afghan.' Her  accent here 

changes to one of solidarity, and identification with the Afghan female students, while the 

passionate arguments conducted in Dari highlight her own fragmented position and divided 

Afghan-Canadian identity caught between two highly polarized cultures and viewpoints. Not to 

mention her personal differences in class (urban; middle-class), a Western upbringing and 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
136 

education, and the privilege to return to her safe Canadian abode and a budding career after her 

trip. As she herself points out following the altercation: 'I get to go back to Canada, but these 

women have to live with this mentality.' Similarly, Pazira compares herself  with Dyana:  'I got 

my chance to live an independent life, but did Dyana?' While this brief comment reflects their two 

lives and destinies asundered by the complexities of a shared  past but individual circumstances 

and opportunities,  it is also highly superficial, given Afghanistan's turbulent history and the very 

reason that the film is supposedly being made to trace and save a friend compelled by her extreme 

hopelessness to consider suicide.17 Not to mention why Pazira’s own family chose to leave 

Afghanistan. Whereas Pazira could have delved more deeply into these issues to present a strong 

‘authorial and autobiographical’ (Naficy 2001: 34) imprint, her hasty treatment leaves a 

disappointing and weak stamp.  

By now, Pazira’s journey seems absurd in its intent: Coming all the way from Canada with a film 

crew, with no address to guide her, moving from one Afghan city to the next, randomly asking 

people she meets in market-places and refugee camps for the whereabouts of her friend, searching 

door-to-door, seeking help from various government officials, including General Dostum, a 

notorious warlord accused of countless war crimes, including a case of  suffocating thousands of 

Taliban fighters in shipping containers being probed by the UN (Barry, 2002). If the unsuspecting 

viewers were given the impression that Pazira had been braving great danger and was finally 

getting closer to tracing her friend, the film itself shatters that expectation and goal.   

Finally, news of a family that may be Dyana’s surfaces, but Pazira is told that she can only visit 

them alone without the film crew. Pazira’s answer, 'It is ok, finding her is more important than the 

film', fails to ring true, and one wonders, if that was indeed the case, why the exercise could have 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
137 

not been carried out in an independent capacity without the need for extensive funding, a film 

crew, and an audience. At this point, it seems even Pazira is not sure which accent to put forth, and 

how. Surrounded by mystery and darkness,  for what is no doubt meant to be the film’s climax, 

Pazira is finally all set to visit Dyana's house. However, springing a surprise on viewers who have 

been waiting for the much-anticipated reunion for close to an hour, Pazira is informed of news 

from Dyana’s uncle that his niece committed suicide some time back. This anti-climax may have 

been plausible and poignant in a fiction film, but reflects on weak filmmaking in a documentary, 

compounding one’s suspicion that the supposed search for Dyana was timed to capitalize on the 

post-9/11 media hype around Afghanistan to launch a film career.18   

Back in Kabul, Pazira visits a shrine she and her friend had  frequented together as young girls, 

and lights candles. The purpose of this sequence, in which the focus is primarily on Pazira herself, 

seems to be the addition of an exotic-plus-spiritual flavour to her filmed journey. Pazira’s slender 

frame, dramatically profiled in the candle-lit interior of the shrine, serves indeed as a 

stereotypically exoticized ending, aimed at conjuring a poignant vision of feminine vulnerability 

in a rough and dangerous terrain – one that appears more reflective of her narcissism and deftly 

orchestrated formulaic accent than a tragic conclusion to an earnest longing to trace and save the 

life of a childhood friend. Pazira's  choreographed journey as an Afghan-diasporic/exilic/migrant 

filmmaker, reflecting aspects of her ‘fluid’ state (Naficy 2001: 17) and clearly made to reach out 

to Western audiences, concludes with her return to her secure environment, along with her 

Canadian crew, with nothing achieved, least of all the purpose declared in the films' title. The film 

ends with intertitles that present unsubstantiated information about the horrific conditions at the 

time in Afghanistan in a quest to jog viewer attention and alarm, and elicit compassion and concern 

among uninitiated audiences at the other end of the globe: one of the highest infant and child-

bearing mortality and illiteracy rates in the world; war-lordism and private armies, financing for 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
138 

which comes 'from drugs, smuggling, taxes,  and direct support from the US government'. Closing 

images of a generation of Afghan children whose innocent smiling faces signify their ignorance of 

the uncertain future that awaits them in a devastated homeland stress their newsworthiness in the 

service of foreign invasions, conflict, and documentaries such as Pazira’s. By the end of the 

documentary, film critic Martin Kramer’s (2002) words ring remarkably true:  

When the history of the Afghan campaign is written, it should be (foot)noted that films 
played a significant role in rallying public opinion behind the idea of changing the regime in 
Kabul—not to eradicate terror but to liberate women from the burqa. (69) 

Whereas Makhmalbaf's dramatization in  Kandahar stands out as a pioneering topical depiction 

from a ‘neighbour’ (Iranian) filmmaker of distinction who understood the pulse of the region, 

religion, culture, languages, the socio-political contradictions of his subjects, as well as the 

complexities of effectively portraying the  diasporic identity and predicament of his Afghan female 

protagonist, Pazira’s attempt to achieve similar depth in  Return to Kandahar remains questionable 

as her ‘opportunistic identity politics’ (Naficy 2001: 269) continues to hold her back. For example, 

her constant display of amazement at the changed scene in Afghanistan since her childhood (the 

burqa-clad schoolgirls, empty library shelves, classes held on floormats) only signify her lack of 

preparation, as a journalist and a filmmaker, regarding the conditions of the long  war in 

Afghanistan, and her profound disconnect  with the place she calls ‘home.’ Similarly, Pazira's 

attempts at conjuring or conveying autobiographical/first-person details come across as dull and 

devoid of true sentiment, as she focusses her formulaic lens to address her pre-determined target 

audience. Likewise, any attempt to show a realist picture of the adversities faced by Afghan women 

lacks depth and fails to convey their predicament, much as feminist film theorist E. Ann Kaplan 

(1983) points out:  'The realist error lies in assuming that showing oppression is sufficient argument 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
139 

in itself’ (137). Similarly, while largely unseen on screen, Paul Jay's prompting presence in the 

film serves as a production prop to steer and shape the narrative, and validate Pazira's journey and 

formulaic accent and  observations for Western audiences. While this prompting strategy ensures 

that Pazira is looking and speaking from the right side of the fence (liberal/progressive/Western), 

it also plays a redeeming and  refining role for her accented emphases throughout the film.  

Return to Kandahar, produced in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 

is a classic example of media opportunism at play that taps the identity and novelty of a Muslim 

woman as a filmmaker and a topical subject representing a distant and dangerous war-torn country 

to produce a mediocre film that rests on sensationalism, exoticism, and flimsy background 

research. Despite the large-scale funding spent to transport a sizeable film crew,  the film does not 

serve any credible purpose or clear focus as a documentary film (e.g. witnessing, investigating, 

documenting, or conveying an activist, feminist, or political intent); nor provokes a serious 

discussion on its socio-political aspects (gender issues; impact of religious fundamentalism on 

women; historical background of the geo-political war and conflict in Afghanistan), or features of 

documentary filmmaking (participatory; expository; investigative; first-person/auto-biographical 

storytelling; women's/feminist filmmaking), hence rendering the impact  and Pazira's 

accent/emphases significantly lacking in cinematic or scholarly substance.  

What contributes most to the lack of depth in Return to Kandahar is the absence of a 

contextual background and insight into the historical factors that led to the turbulent conditions in 

Afghanistan. Despite her audio-visual medium, active participation, and expository intent, Pazira 

fails to foreground her topic effectively and convey what Kapur (2002) concisely sums up in her 

incisive article as the intertwined factors that led to the struggle for power in Afghanistan:   



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
140 

The Taliban swept across Afghanistan in 1996 not simply as a religious force determined to set up 

an Islamic state. It was a force born in the crucible of the Cold War, schooled in the Madrasas and 

whose members were raised in refugee camps. It was a force whose very way of life was war and 

which imposed its way of life on an entire country through brute force and violence. To view the 

Taliban as a force that is exclusively the outcome of religion does not create space for the fact that 

the current conflict is neither ancient nor archaic. It did not emerge from the passages of ancient 

religious texts. It is a contemporary movement that emerged from equally contemporary 

conditions, relations and conflicts. (220)  

In the absence of the underlying contextual background that Kapur points to, depictions in Return 

to Kandahar remain superficial and no more than the viewpoint of a highly distanced native more 

in tune with the comforts and privileges of an adopted life elsewhere, in this case the contrast 

between Canada and Afghanistan. Equally, the film reflects the Western tendency to fund and 

award sub-standard work for reproducing its stereotypes of oppressed Muslim women, particularly 

in the case of a filmmaker who can also add exoticism and novelty (Muslim/woman). A tendency 

made obvious by the numerous awards that  Return to Kandahar won, including  the Gemini 

Award  for the Best Social Issue Documentary, and Best International Documentary in 2003 in 

Canada (Tokawa, 2013: 161).  

It is disappointing that Pazira’s own presence and attempts to share her personal childhood 

experiences in the film, her knowledge of the local language, Dari (which she uses frequently and 

fluently), as well as appearance (variations of local dress and head covering), and a largely 

monovocal dominance collectively reflect a superficial ‘self-inscription’ (Naficy 2001: 277), 

failing to convey a substantial depth of connection with the lives and identity of the people and 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
141 

land she has travelled across continents to document. In Trinh Minh-ha’s words (1991), Pazira is 

reminiscent of 'the Inappropriate Other/Same who moves about with always at least two/four 

gestures: that of affirming “I am like you” while persisting in her difference; and that of reminding 

“I am different” while unsettling every definition of otherness arrived at’ (74).  

If anyone has benefited from the making of Return to Kandahar, it seems it is Pazira herself who 

seizes the opportunity for funded self-indulgence to establish herself as a ‘filmmaker’ by exploiting 

Western fascination with a remote and dangerous land (Afghanistan); an exotic filmmaker with a 

heavy English accent (Afghan, young, Muslim woman); a largely unknown culture 

(Pashtun/Afghan); the added mysteriousness couched in a foreign language (Dari); and the extra-

diegetic addition of soulful traditional music and Dari songs in the background to create a distinctly 

foreign and spiritually ignited atmosphere. Against all these factors that seem to dominate the 

production, any mention and pursuit of Dyana appears coincidental and a mere excuse to launch a 

film career. 

No doubt, much like Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar, the role of the 'historical moment' in which 

Return to Kandahar was 'produced, distributed, and exhibited, and the audience it reached' 

(Kleinhans, 1984: 320) cannot be underestimated in the international recognition and audiences 

Pazira's film attracted despite the marked difference between the depth and quality of 

representations depicted by each filmmaker. By the end of the film, one strongly wishes Pazira 

had not returned to Kandahar. At least not with this accent. 

Act of Dishonour (2009) 

Spurred by the success of Return to Kandahar, Nelofer Pazira returned to Afghanistan to film her 

directorial debut feature Act of Dishonour (2009) which, she claimed in an interview, is based on 

a true story.19 In this ‘accented’ film (Naficy 2001) we see Pazira playing the role of an Afghan-



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
142 

Canadian interpreter, Mejgan, who accompanies an all-male Canadian film crew. The audience, 

however, is not immediately told about the nature or significance of the venture that the film unit 

has travelled all the way to Afghanistan to shoot.  

This time, Pazira strengthens her formulaic accent with a thematic combination of the burqa and 

honour-killing. From the very outset her ‘opportunistic identity politics’ (Naficy 2001: 269)  is 

clear as she appears dressed in jeans, a long coat, and a loose scarf partially covering her head to 

maintain her foreign/Western identity and visual separation from the impoverished and backward 

Afghan environment she is in (one she terms ‘primitive’ in the film). With her strangely 

expressionless acting and bored demeanour she comes across as the very embodiment of the 

distanced native who returns only for vested interests, camouflaged as cultural curiosity and 

‘finding oneself.’  

Filmed in an Afghan village near the Tajikistan border, Pazira pitches her story around a fifteen-

year-old girl, Mena, played by Afghan actress Marina Golbahari, a beggar girl who was discovered 

by Iranian filmmaker Sedik Barmak on the streets of Kabul, and who portrayed the title role in his 

award-winning film Osama (2003) (Gall, 2004). We see Mena, displaying all the youthful 

attractiveness of a beautiful, vulnerable girl dreaming of her approaching wedding to a young bus 

driver, Rehmat (played by Masood Serwary). In an otherwise sparse environment that holds little 

promise, Mena is lured into playing a small role in the Canadian film by Mejgan in return for a 

burqa that she needs to complete her trousseau. Pazira’s formulaic accent again hinges on the 

burqa  as a visual symbol of Afghan women’s  backwardness and oppression while she covers her 

own head with a loosely worn scarf  to distinguish her liberated onscreen identity.  

 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
143 

Reluctant, but enticed by the film crew’s colourful cart of costume burqas, we see Mena fearfully 

step out of the house with Mejgan to participate in the shoot despite cultural taboos and without 

her father’s knowledge. As a result of her digression, Mena is  dealt the harsh verdict of ‘honour-

killing’ by the village elders who see her interaction with foreign male crew-members as ‘adultery’ 

and an unforgiveable affront to the honour of the entire village and their religio-cultural principles: 

an honour-crime they voice is punishable by ‘stoning to death’, and ‘honour-killing.’ Even though 

the honour-related verdict is supposedly the turning point of the film, Pazira does not provide a 

context for her audience on the notion of honour-killing as a  cultural practice as opposed to a 

religious one. Nor is the significance of the custom identified as a 'moralistic' stance that usually 

results in the murder of women whose bodies are seen as the repositories of so-called family and 

community 'honour' in tribal and ultra-conservative patriarchal societies (Hayat, 2002: 88).20  

As tribal traditions and customs overrule relationships, under pressure from the village elders we 

see Mena’s father make an attempt to kill her with a knife as she sleeps, but, overcome by 

emotions, refrains from doing so. Instead, he passes on the task to end Mena’s life to her fiancé 

who, gun in hand, arrives to lead her out of her house as neighbours watch.   

Once their job in the village is done, we see the crew packing up and leaving in their jeep, oblivious 

of the tragic outcome of Mena’s interaction with them and the consequences of this supposed ‘act 

of dishonour’ on a young and innocent life that was just beginning to blossom. In the following 

scene we see Rehmat, convinced by the villagers, Mena's father, and his own mother that his male 

honour, and by association that of the entire community, are at stake, escort Mena to her fate in 

the desert. We hear him firing a shot and then calmly walking back with his gun and Mena’s green 

chador in hand. As the film ends, we see Mena (now without her chador) standing alone and 

sobbing  in the desert as the sun sets behind her. This final open-ended scene that could have sealed 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
144 

a powerful comment in the hands of a more able and sensitive director is rendered flat and 

mediocre. Pazira’s unimaginative and dull treatment and distinctively poor direction are 

unmistakeably reflected in Rehmat and Mena's acting in what is supposed to be an emotionally 

charged climax scene of the film. Instead, the most Pazira manages is a set of  banal lines delivered 

by Mena in her defence as she addressed her fiancé on the way to the desert: 'I haven’t committed 

a sin. I had a wedding dress. I didn't have a burqa. It was all for you.'  

It is ironic that Mena, brazenly exploited by Mejgan, was eventually denied the promised 'purple' 

burqa by the crew as she could not complete her stint in the film shoot (instead, we see Mejgan 

offer her cash payment)---a burqa Mena may pay for with her life (honour-killing) and would not 

need for a wedding that is not to be.  

Similarly, Mejgan's exchanges with Ali, a returnee of  Hazara ethnicity, who helps the Canadian 

unit to set up a makeshift cinema for the village children, reflect Pazira's superficiality and 

disconnect with her subject and strange ignorance (even as a journalist) of  the centuries of socio-

cultural contexts embedded in the patriarchal mindsets of the very culture she has come to depict, 

and claims as her Afghan origins. For example, her claim to help Afghan women results in the 

very opposite. Asked by Ali for the reason behind her visit to the place she has called 'primitive', 

she states gallantly: 'I wanted to come and help, especially the women.  I don't like the men's 

attitude here.' One wonders if  causing the potential danger of honour-killing had even crossed her 

mind as she set out to 'help' a young woman given the consequences of doing so that we see in her 

film. Especially given that the Afghan tribal society tends to rely on their own parallel legal system 

of law-enforcement known as pakhtunwali that comprises an all-male tribal council known as the 

loya jirga and panchayat (jury) headed by tribal chiefs whose decisions are non-contestable, and 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
145 

neither are women allowed to testify or speak in their defence (Yousafzai and Gohar, 2005: 23).21 

Such voids and stark lapses in conveying a contextual understanding of the culture she is 

portraying show Pazira's  indifference and disregard for a meaningful understanding of her subject 

and its depiction for unversed audiences. Surprisingly, any deep understanding or consideration of 

the cultural aspects and importance of tribal ‘honour’ are ignored under Pazira’s directorial (or 

journalistic) abilities nor given due significance to add depth to the storyline or to the character of 

her protagonist.  

In a bid to fuel life into her film, Pazira adds several incidents and parallel stories: Rehmat’s 

childhood experience of shooting his father’s murderer in the opening scene as he is supported in 

his revenge-killing by the village elders serves as a reference to the film's topic of 'honour-killing' 

(the enactment of a child committing a validated murder very obviously meant to hold audience 

attention); the Canadian crew introducing cinema and cartoons to the village children by setting 

up a small makeshift film theatre, only to be shut down by the conservative locals who display 

extreme hostility for the 'foreigners'; a displaced Hazara family returning to the village to reclaim 

their house after the war but failing to do so (Tanner, 2002: 284).22 However, the film fails to 

achieve any depth of meaning or poignancy that a topic of this nature (honour-killing), supported 

by a strong production team, international institutional funding and assistance, and exhibition 

venues associated with ‘accented’ cinemas (Naficy 2001: 292), could have produced in the hands 

of a sensitive and artistically competent filmmaker versed in the history and socio-cultural 

traditions and norms of the subject matter at hand. The many loose ends (for example, Mena’s 

father buying rat-poison at a stall in the desert that he hands over to Rehmat to kill her, but we 

never see it being used), and lax editing and unnecessary scenes that fail to add significant meaning 

to the narrative, drag the film to ninety minutes. Unfortunately,  the film ends without making a 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
146 

marked impact in the absence of a grounded socio-cultural representation of the subject or 

traditions prevalent in the region.  support 

The film’s only saving grace and striking element is Paul Sarossy’s cinematography that 

independently captures pleasing visuals and contrasting scenes of sun-baked desert land, mountain 

streams, and magnificent painting-like images of trees in bloom to imaginatively reflect the many 

shades of developments and emotions in the film that otherwise lack creative substance and depth.  

Authenticity undoubtedly not being a major concern in the film, Pazira’s formulaic depiction of 

Mena comes across more as an alluring Bollywood village damsel than an Afghan girl raised in 

an ultra-conservative environment where religion and cultural traditions reign supreme, and 

intense war and internal strife have destroyed all semblance of a normal life. Whereas Mena may 

not have had any exposure to the outside world (her only view even in the village is from  a gap-

like window in the wall of her mud-house), nor even possess the essential burqa, Pazira’s  

emphasis on exoticism ensures that her heroine is well-versed in portraying a glamourous image 

as she admires herself in front of a half-length mirror in her home, swirling around and playing 

with her flowing locks.  

Pazira’s  formulaic accent and reliance on exoticism and romanticizing Mena’s looks and appeal 

for a Western audience runs throughout the film, as she depicts Mena with her glossy blow-dried 

long tresses flowing out of a maroon chador that barely covers her head, and even so keeps slipping 

provocatively, and for the main part dressed in a flowing maroon dress to match. Mena tells us she 

collects rain-water to wash her hair (that too in the desert!). And,  in an attempt to add pathos to 

her story, to do so she uses bottles that once contained medication to cure her mother from 

tuberculosis. Her appearance contrasts sharply with the subdued and staid  depiction of the other 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
147 

women shown in traditional attires, with their heads covered even inside their homes. It is also not 

clear why Mena, despite being a young woman of marriageable age by Afghan standards, still does 

not own a burqa of her own – a garment that even the poorest of Afghan women would  possess. 

And why her father, who can afford her wedding, would not provide the staple burqa for his 

daughter? The result is a weak, scarcely credible portrayal and storyline.  

The filmmaker’s accent and emphasis is clearly on promoting novelty, not substance. Even though 

a story centered on the very same topics (burqa, honour-killing, gender, war) could have been 

represented most effectively, particularly given the creative license afforded by a feature film. 

Hannah McGregor (2012) reflects on Pazira’s work:  

The independent woman filmmaker occupies a difficult position. She must deal with the standard 

difficulties of independent filmmakers (funding, distribution, and artistic compromise), while 

negotiating an identity at once marginalized and exoticized. Her subject position makes her films 

more vulnerable to critique from other post-colonial and feminist thinkers and, particularly since 

she’s an Afghan-Canadian woman producing documentaries in the wake of September 11, more 

exposed to certain kinds of social and political coding. Because Pazira’s Afghan background lends 

her documentaries an aura of cultural authenticity, they are both more prone to being read as the 

‘truth’ about Afghanistan and to being critiqued for complicity with this reading. (110)  

Regardless of the complexities outlined by McGregor, watching and evaluating  Act of Dishonour 

as a final product with its sketchy storyline, superficial characterization, flat dialogues delivered 

with equally scant feeling (including the hackneyed ‘burqa is a prison’  discourse by a Canadian 

crew member on the ‘oppressive’ nature of veiling for women thrown in for good measure), one 

can’t make excuses for its weaknesses regardless of the filmmaker’s ‘accented’ position, 

‘interstitial’ location, and ‘opportunistic identity politics’  (Naficy 2001). 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
148 

It becomes increasingly obvious that Act of Dishonour  has been made as a hurried product with 

an unversed foreign audience in mind, rather than an accent/emphasis on authenticity of portrayals, 

depth of representations and characterization, and sound historical and cultural background 

research, factors that mark quality filmmaking and memorable cultural portrayals. One is pressed 

to ask: how many more such ‘poor them’ formulaic film productions will bank on selling the 

ravages of war in Afghanistan; the ever-horrific custom of ‘honour-killing’; patriarchal control and 

Muslim women’s oppression; and related socio-cultural issues abroad if devoid of intelligent 

content and meaningful cinematic depictions? One also cannot but wonder about Pazira’s 

motivations, whether she is naïve, clever and opportunistic, simply a weak filmmaker, or herself  

the victim of a fragmented identity who is tempted by Western funding opportunities, willing to 

be exploited as a ‘native informant’ (Usamah, 2008: 49) for recognition and fame23  by reproducing 

and endorsing stereotypical notions of the oppressed Muslim woman who needs to be ‘saved’ 

(Abu-Lughod, 2013: 27) and liberated.  

Significantly, whereas in Return to Kandahar Pazira expressed the urge to 'pull off' the 

imprisoning burqa, in Act of Dishonour she sets out to lure her protagonist by promising to provide 

her the very same garment ('prison'?) to serve another facet of her formulaic accent.  

Noticeably distanced from the socio-cultural codes of her Afghan origins, Pazira's shallow 

portrayal of Mena as a young  beautiful, vulnerable girl facing dire consequences that are etched 

in tradition and tribal customs is yet again an example of accenting novelty over quality.  

Written, and directed by Pazira, and produced by her film company Kandahar Films (which she 

founded in 2001), in association with Foundry Films, Nomad Films, and support from the National 

Film Board of Canada, Act of Dishonour boasts a substantial film production team and yet fails to 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
149 

deliver beyond a disappointingly flat tale of the ever horrific, and disturbing (particularly to 

Western audiences) topic of  ‘honour-killing.’ By now, to viewers familiar with his flare to add 

surreal humour with sensitivity to instil meaning and life into the most bleak and ordinary of 

situations and scenes, it is quite obvious that having had a head-start  with Mohsen Makhmalbaf 

is not a guarantee of becoming a filmmaker of his calibre. Something the viewer is reminded of 

particularly with Pazira’s lack of depth in characterization, including her own (as Mejgan), and 

inability to portray a population and culture (one that she claims the agency to represent through 

her own origins) that is fraught with decades of war-weariness, religious fundamentalism, poverty, 

despair, and attendant complexities. Film critic Jennie Punter (2010) aptly seals Pazira’s cinematic 

outcome in her review: 

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Paul Sarossy, Act of Dishonour has elements of what 
could have been a fascinating insight into a culture on the cusp of change, in a part of the 
world we know little about. If only that Canadian film crew didn't get in the way.24 

Disappointingly, Act of Dishonour, as in the case of Return to Kandahar,  signifies that although 

Pazira may belong to the Afghan diaspora, unfortunately her films add nothing to the otherwise 

rich, meaningful, informative, and entertaining ‘Diaspora cinema’ category that spans globally 

diverse contributions (Naficy 2001:13) and their ‘exilic, diasporic, and ethnic’ characteristics (11).  

Pazira’s only achievement may be that her films attempted to vindicate the post-9/11  US stance 

to attack Afghanistan, and the vast amounts spent on its so-called ‘War on Terror.’  

Failing to weave the socio-cultural, historical, political, and traditional contexts in her formulaic 

and exoticized representations in Act of Dishonour, ironically Pazira’s own words during a 

conversation with  Mena  are the only thing that ring true by the end of her directorial feature: 'I 

have lost my way.' As indeed did the US, we are reminded, as it freed Afghanistan from the Taliban 

in December 2001 only to hand it back to them twenty years later in August 2021.  



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
150 

Pazira’s ‘Accented’ Position 

A contextual reading of Pazira’s two films reflects her 'interstitial location' (Naficy, 2001: 20). and 

self-positioning as one of conscious distancing from the culture, country, people and circumstances 

that she sets out to portray, and the viewer expects her to identify with, given her Afghan origins.  

Instead, we see an emphasis on what Hamid Naficy refers to as ‘opportunistic identity politics’ 

(269) that is made apparent through Pazira’s conscious self-separation from her subjects to 

propagate and validate a Western point of view of the dismal and backward conditions in a conflict-

weary Afghanistan.  

If Pazira becomes a ‘situated but universal’ (10) figure it is not because of her accented and 

diasporic identity, but more so because of what I have argued is her formulaic accent, and the 

timing and appeal of her topics in both films for Western audiences and film festivals. It is 

particularly significant to note that, although the filmmaker’s origins  and early life are embedded 

in the turbulent history of Afghanistan, she underplays this autobiographical and experiential 

connection to instead facilitate her distancing, and shape and strengthen her formulaic accent.  

Playing 'opportunistic identity politics,' (269)  the most that Pazira manages (or allows) as evidence 

of her connection to Afghanistan is the periodic insertion of still photographs of holidaying and 

family picnics of her pre-migration time spent in Afghanistan (Return to Kandahar), which, 

ironically,  given the post-9/11 circumstances and the conditions of the women she interacts with  

in the film (poverty-stricken street vendors, subjugated students, internally displaced refugees),  

sharply highlights her disconnect with the very people she wants to show an affinity with for the 

benefit of appealing to her audiences.  Instead, her own privileged status, class, and socio-

economic disconnect  contrast sharply during her interactions with her subjects, hence ironically 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
151 

strengthening what I argue as her  'outsider returning temporarily to leave' position even further. 

Her ticket to success and recognition seems to lie solely on her own attractive and exoticized 

appearance in her films either as a circumstantially displaced Afghan woman, now claiming 

authenticity in her reporting back from her travels through documentary film (Return to 

Kandahar), or performative  role as an Afghan woman returning to her country of origin though 

feature films (Kandahar and Act of Dishonour). 

Pazira’s filmic portrayals, comments, and observations come across as significantly indifferent, 

stereotyped, and essentialist because of their superficiality. This is particularly so because her 

focus in both films centers on outward symbols of women’s oppression and subjugation (burqa) 

without a substantial historical, political,  and socio-cultural background to foreground them. 

Although an ‘accented’ (4) subject herself, Pazira’s ‘self-inscription’ and ‘homecoming and 

border-crossings’ (277)  in both films are one of a carefully crafted  and pre-determined formulaic 

accent that employs a marked separation from her Afghan women subjects and their predicaments 

(Return to Kandahar) and self-exoticization, and orientalism in her depictions of her protagonist 

as well as herself (Act of Dishonour). Significantly, although in Return to Kandahar Pazira 

presents her homecoming to Afghanistan as a journey with the distinctly personal motive to trace 

and save the life of a childhood friend, her 'authorial' (34) touch that may reflect a deep connection 

to her purpose remains sketchy. Her attempts at autobiographical reflections seem to be added 

purely as staged fillers to add poignancy to an otherwise insipid story and incredulous journey.  

Pazira’s formulaic approach, while targeting a Western audience, and validating their perceptions 

of Afghanistan, no doubt also satisfy  her Western funders, but in the process compromise and 

weaken her ‘exilic, diasporic, and ethnic' (11) filmic position, facets of all of which could have 

added strength to her portrayals and standing as a filmmaker of substance. Similarly, any attempts 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
152 

by Pazira at 'auto-ethnographic' representations (Nichols, 2001: 18) ring hollow, and appear 

significantly tailored to fill gaps in the film and give the impression of being presented in passing. 

For example, in Return to Kandahar, scenes of  Pazira visiting her old school and speaking with 

students about wearing the burqa, or her conversation with women vendors on the sidewalk in 

Mazar-e-Sharif appear moulded to show a deep interest in women's issues and what may be 

perceived as their oppressive conditions in the clutches of a fundamentalist and patriarchal society, 

and gender-discriminatory traditions. Likewise,  Act of Dishonour pitches the  horrific and familiar 

topic of 'honour-killing' associated with conservative Muslim and tribal societies (although this 

custom has no connection to religion) to attract Western audiences and seek a slot at film festivals. 

However, the filmmaker’s exoticization of her protagonist coupled with her narcissistic and 

orientalized self-projection at a shrine in Act of Dishonour damage her directorial input, robbing 

the film of  meaningful substance despite its powerful subject of honour-killing.  

For Western Eyes: Quality or Novelty? 

It is important to question how Pazira's stories and self-projections in Return to Kandahar and Act 

of Dishonour  resonate and connect across borders and cultures in the West, and what are the 

factors that contribute to their appeal at Western international film festivals in particular: is it her 

own (exotic) participation in her topical films as a ‘Muslim’ women, with all of the contradictions 

and constraints this entails for Muslim women's participation in the public sphere in conservative 

societies (in this case Afghanistan) that brings them added attention and recognition? Hence, is it 

the quality of these filmic portrayals, or the novelty of their filmmaker, subjects, and the timely 

execution of a  formulaic accent that garnered them international acclaim, and Pazira a film career? 

Consequently, is quality inevitably  compromised when novelty dominates to attract and secure 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
153 

foreign funding, screening opportunities, inclusion at film festivals, and popularity among remote 

and unversed audiences, all largely located in the West? Martin Kramer (2002) comments on 

timing being of the essence in opportunistic filmic projections of Afghanistan: 

It was a mercifully short war, the campaign to drive the Taliban from their hold on power in 

Afghanistan—so short, in fact, that general knowledge of Afghanistan couldn’t possibly keep pace 

with military operations. There was so much to digest: not just the Taliban regime, but 

Afghanistan’s complex ethnic composition, its history of civil conflict, the loaded question of 

Islam, and the country’s murky relations with Pakistan and the Arab world. It is at moments like 

this, when time is short and the subject is foreign, that documentary and foreign films attain an 

influence they never enjoy in peacetime.25 

Given the timing of her cinematic introduction to the world in Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar 

to her own foray into filmmaking, it is apparent that Pazira had the stage set to capture a film 

market and audiences engulfed by 24/7 images of a remote and raging conflict in Afghanistan in 

the wake of the  US-led ‘War on Terror’. Added to this was the much-touted freedom for Afghan 

women, particularly from what was perceived as the most obvious symbol of their oppression: the 

burqa. Usamah (2008) notes:  

That the oppression of women was sold as a central reason for needing to topple the Taliban 
(Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006) also reveals that Orientalist imaginations are gendered. Indeed, 
the type of developmentalist intervention that Orientalism furthers is often predicated on 
helping women.(52) 

It is not mere chance then that both of Pazira’s films discussed here also focus on women as the 

central characters and victims in her stories. Added to the aforementioned factors are elements of 

filming in a dangerous terrain; claiming authenticity and agency as a native and 'insider'; Pazira’s  

own visual participation as an Afghan diaspora woman filmmaker; self-orientalization and 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
154 

exoticization of her own  history of displacement and refugee status as a result of conflict; 

homecoming and nostalgia. All of these are aspects that Pazira strategically packages to attract 

foreign funding and sympathetic audiences, clearly placing her formulaic emphases on expressions 

of  novelty, rather than quality.   

Likewise, we see Pazira's complicity (conscious or unwitting) with Western media's legitimation 

of the 'War on Terror' and focus on images of burqa-clad Muslim women as oppressed beings in 

dire need of rescue by white/Western feminisms and military interventions. A legitimation we see 

mirrored in Pazira's anxious urge to 'pull off' the  burqa from an Afghan woman, reminding one of 

feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty’s reference (1991) to the 'debilitating generality' of Third 

World women's oppressed 'object status’ (71) in her essay entitled ‘Under Western Eyes’ that 

critiques Western feminist approaches that essentialize non-white women as a homogeneous 

group. Conversely, we see Pazira validate this essentialist  ‘object status’ in her films through a 

formulaic accent  that is specifically shaped for Western eyes.  

Conclusion 

Differing from Naficy's formulation of the ‘'accented cinema' (2001), Pazira's  carefully executed 

formulaic accent employs all the trappings of appealing to eager Western sources of funding and 

unversed audiences: the topical subject of the post-9/11 US-led War on Terrorism; Western media 

hype around Muslim women, war, burqa, religious fundamentalism, gender subjugation; the 

pathos of suicide by a young girl, and the ruthlessness of honour-killing and potential violent 

victimization of a young bride-to-be as a consequence of patriarchal dictates and customs. Ticking 

all the boxes, her formulaic approach is modelled for success and winning awards that Valck et al 

(2016) point to  as the most tangible form of symbolic capital-catapulting a film and filmmaker to 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
155 

a position of fame and wide acceptance (20). Certainly, the undeniable role of international media 

outlets and festivals in advancing  filmmaking careers, and  acceptance at film festivals no doubt 

remains a crucial factor in the promotion of Third Word, diaspora, minority and marginal cinemas.  

Instead of the native insider, each time Pazira seems to return to Afghanistan as the 'native 

outsider,' backed by generous funders and leaving with guaranteed Western audiences willing to 

overlook her  shortcomings and emblematic over-simplification of socio-cultural, political, and 

historical issues in her representations as long as she reproduces essentialist  stereotypes with an 

exotic flavour that can ensure exotic  portrayals and easy marketing. The reviews for Return to 

Kandahar are self-explanatory.26 Commenting on Pazira’s acting abilities in Kandahar, New York 

Times film critic Elvis Mitchell (2001) had this to say when the film played at the Lincoln Plaza, 

New York:  

Mr. Makhmalbaf isn't much of a storyteller, and Ms. Pazira is more than his equal in her lack 
of acting ability. She looks slightly distracted when staring into the camera; she seems to be 
waiting for instructions to change expression to come over an ear piece, and the instructions 
never quite get there.27  

Noting  Pazira’s reactions to the various absurd and unpredictable incidents she encounters in the 

film, Mitchell continued: 

By this point Ms. Pazira's vacant stare has become a part of the texture of ''Kandahar'': you 
almost can't imagine anybody else -- certainly not someone who might actually react to these 
unusual proceedings -- as the lead.28 

Whereas Mohsen Makhmalbaf has certainly proved his abilities otherwise time and again, it seems 

Nelofer Pazira has maintained her shortcomings and vacant stare in both her slow-paced directorial 

ventures discussed here, minus her attractive self and fluency in Dari. Her formulaic ‘accented' 

returns to Afghanistan leave much to be desired. 

 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
156 

Afterword 

July 2021: As I commenced research on this paper, media reports began to pour in confirming the 

final  exit of US forces from Bagram Air base in Afghanistan who ‘switched off the lights’ and 

left quietly in the dark of the night without even informing their hosts, citing ‘security’ reasons.29 

After 20 years of war that resulted in clear defeat for the US, the indescribable devastation of 

Afghanistan includes countless natives maimed, killed, raped, slaughtered, internally displaced, 

not to mention the refugees and exiles scattered around the world, mostly forced to live  in 

miserable conditions in refugee camps. Once again the country stood at the threshold  of 

lawlessness, political crisis, and war-lordism as the Taliban continued to make significant and 

swift progress to overpower the Afghan army and take control of district after district.30 The only 

difference being that with the Western forces now gone, the media had no interest in covering the 

ground situation in Afghanistan. How many will now return, foreigners or members of the Afghan 

diaspora,  to make a film remains to be seen. What funding outlets and channels would now be 

interested particularly in the plight of Afghan women and their conditions as the Taliban begin to 

enforce their rule and ideology with renewed vigour and greater power now as a political entity 

enjoying bargaining power on the international forum, also remains to be seen. One thing is certain: 

yet again women will be the first targets of religious identity and nationalism. And likely the 

country will once again be too far away and obscure to matter other than for conflictual purposes, 

relayed back by the media, if at all, as a signpost of backwardness, lawlessness, and strife to the 

very Western powers that had invaded to liberate, develop, and reconstruct it. 

 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
157 

A clear message regarding regressive policies has already been conveyed as the Taliban issued a 

decree for all unmarried girls, women, and widows  under 40 to marry ‘Taliban.’ Lists of all such 

potential brides had already been ordered in provinces under their control as they advanced towards 

the capital city of Kabul.31 No doubt the policy is aimed to use women of child-bearing age to 

extend their ideology through a controlled population growth. Likewise, as another extremist and 

absurd measure, even mannequins were ordered to be beheaded! Such is the nature of the Taliban’s 

gender-specific control and dogma. 

 

On August 15, 2021, the fall of Kabul heralded the end of any hope that Afghans may still have 

harboured as the Taliban comfortably ensconced themselves in the Presidential Palace while 

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani packed his bags with ‘US dollars’ and fled the country with his 

close aides,  reportedly to Tajikistan.32 On August 31, just before midnight,  US commander Maj. 

Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, boarded a transport 

plane as the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan.33  After 20 years, the Taliban, hunted as 

criminals by the US,  had arrived as victors to form their government. Their first action was to 

rename the country as the  Islamic Emirate of  Afghanistan (IEA), and their leader as a Caliph.34 

All this was taking place even as the Western states still scrambled to evacuate their citizens; the 

US embassy lowered its flag while personnel raced to destroy sensitive materials and documents; 

and Afghans  nervously watched their country left destroyed and betrayed both by foreign powers 

that had vowed to 'save' it from the Taliban, and their own successive rulers who had claimed to 

steer it towards progress and a successful future. A new game plan was now in action, and the 

Taliban were calling the shots in the very presence of the US forces that had invaded the county 

two decades earlier. The world media was already beginning to compare the US defeat and 



 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
158 

unceremonious exit from Afghanistan with its defeat in Vietnam in the 1970s. The global political 

and media interest had now shifted to geo-political developments and the role regional powers 

such as Pakistan, India, Russia, and China would play in recognizing the new Taliban government, 

and how the scenario would play out for the Western world, particularly the US. Afghan women's 

freedoms, human rights, and re-building of Afghanistan  were of little or no concern. Already. 

 

One wonders would a Pazira return to Kandahar to capture developments and acts of dishonour 

now? 

REFERENCES: 

A. Ruiz, Hiram. (2002). ‘Afghanistan: Conflict and Displacement 1978-2001.’ Forced Migration 

Review. FMR 13 June. Refugees Studies Centre, University of Oxford, UK. 

https://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/september-11th-has-anything-

changed/ruiz.pdf. Accessed 26 December 2021. 

 

A.A. Hayat. (2002). Women: Victims of Social Evil. Pakistan Institute of Security Management. 

Islamabad: Press Corporation of Pakistan.  

 

Abu-Lughod, Lila. (2013). Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University 

Press. 

Ali Wardak. (2003). ‘Concept and Definition of Jirga.' Jirga – A Traditional Mechanism of 

Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan. Wales: University of Glamorgan.  



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
159 

Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-

video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-

EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-

XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1

007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-

434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e. 

Accessed 24 January 2022. 

 

Ansari, Usamah.  (2008). ““Should I Go and Pull Her Burqa Off?’’: Feminist Compulsions, Insider 

Consent, and a Return to Kandahar.” Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 25, No. 1, 

March 2008. Routledge. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295030701849340. 

Accessed 10 November 2021. 

 

Arat-Koc, Sedef. (2002). 'Imperial Wars or Benevolent Interventions? Reflections on "Global 

Feminisms" Post September 11th.' Atlantis. Volume 26.2, Spring/Summer 2002.   

 

I. Badalic, Vasja. (2019). The War Against Civilians: Victims of the "War on 

Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. E-book: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in 

Victims and Victimology. 

II. Barry, John. (2002). ‘The Death Convoy Of Afghanistan.’ Newsweek, August 25, 

2002. https://www.newsweek.com/death-convoy-afghanistan-144273. Accessed 

23 January 2022. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295030701849340


 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
160 

Crawford, Neta C. (2016). ‘Costs of War.’ Rhode Island: Watson Institute Brown University. 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2015/War%20in%20Afghanistan%2

0and%20Pakistan%20UPDATE_FINAL.pdf.  Accessed 15 November 2021. 

III. Gall, Carlotta. (2004). ‘Worlds Away from Hollywood, A Young Star Under the 

Veil; The Actress in 'Osama' Dreams of Life Beyond Kabul.’ The New York 

Times, March 3, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/movies/worlds-

away-hollywood-young-star-under-veil-actress-osama-dreams-life-beyond.html. 

Accessed 30 November 2021. 

Graham, Mark. (2010). Afghanistan in the Cinema. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.  

 

Hassan M. Yousufzai and Ali Gohar.  (2005). ‘The Context of Jirga.’ Towards Understanding 

Pukhtoon Jirga. Peshawar: Just Peace International Publishers. 

Hussain, Zahid. (2007). Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam. New York: 

Columbia University Press.  

Ibrahimi, S. Yaqub. (2017).  ‘The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001): ‘War-

Making and State-Making’ as an Insurgency Strategy.' Small Wars & Insurgencies. Vol. 28; Issue 

6. (947-972). 2017. Taylor & Francis Online. 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2017.1374598?src=recsys. Accessed 1 

December 2021. 

 

IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=taliban. Accessed 24 January 2022. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/movies/worlds-away-hollywood-young-star-under-veil-actress-osama-dreams-life-beyond.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/movies/worlds-away-hollywood-young-star-under-veil-actress-osama-dreams-life-beyond.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2017.1374598?src=recsys
https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=taliban


 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
161 

 

Jackson, A. (2009).  'The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict: 1978-2009.' Afghan Civil 

Society Forum. https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/afghanistan-the-cost-of-

war_14.pdf. Accessed 8 November 2021. 

Makhmalbaf, Mohsen. Kandahar. (2001). Iran. 85-min. Avatar Films. 

(Dari/English/Pashto/English Sub-titles). 

Kaplan, E. Ann. (1983). ' Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York:  Methuen. 

Kapur, Ratna. (2002). ‘Unveiling Women’s Rights in the ‘War on Terrorism.’ 9 Duke Journal of 

Gender Law & Policy. (Summer). 211 225.  https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djglp/vol9/iss2/2 . 

Accessed 24 January 2022. 

Kleinhans, Chuck.  (1984). ‘Forms, Politics, Makers and Contexts: Basic Issues for a Theory of 

Radical Political Documentary.' Waugh, Thomas (ed). “Show Us Life”: Toward a History and 

Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary. New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press Inc.  

Kramer, Martin. (2002). ‘The Camera and the Burqa.’ Middle East Quarterly. Spring 2002. 69-

76. http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/the-camera-and-the-burqa/. Accessed 24 

November 2021. 

Makhmalbaf Film House. http://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=film/kandahar. Accessed 22 January 

2022. 

Marsden, Peter. (1998). The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan. London: 

Zed Books Ltd.  

https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/afghanistan-the-cost-of-war_14.pdf
https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/afghanistan-the-cost-of-war_14.pdf
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djglp/vol9/iss2/2
http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/the-camera-and-the-burqa/
http://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=film/kandahar


 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
162 

McGregor, Hannah. (2012). Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in 

Canadian Women’s Archives. Morra, Linda M. and Schagerl, Jessica (eds). Ontario: Wilfrid 

Laurier University Press. 

Minh-ha. Trinh T. ( 1991). When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural 

Politics. New York: Routledge.  

Mitchell, Elvis. (2001).  ‘Veils of Tears Frame Lives in Kandahar.’ Film Review, The New York 

Times. December 14, 2001. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/movies/film-review-veils-of-

tears-frame-lives-in-kandahar.html. Accessed 25 October 2021. 

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (1991).  'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial 

Discourses.' Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, 

and Lourdes Torres (eds). Bloomington and Indianapolis:  Indiana University Press. 

Mosley, Philip. (2004). Film and Television After 9/11.  Dixon, Wheeler Winston (ed). Chicago: 

Southern Illinois University Press. 

Naficy, Hamid. (2001). An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: 

Princeton University Press.  

Nasr, Ariel.  (2020). “Fragmented Memory: Unearthing Film History in Kabul, Afghanistan.” 

Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture.  Vol. 5, No. 1.  March 4, 2020.  

https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2020/03/notes-on-the-forbidden-reel/. Accessed 17 

December 2021. 

Nichols, Bill. (2010). Introduction to Documentary.  (Second Edition). Bloomington & 

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.  

https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2020/03/notes-on-the-forbidden-reel/


 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
163 

Paracha, Nadeem. F. (2018). ‘Afghanistan: The 40-year-war (and counting).’  Naya Daur Media. 

February 4. https://medium.com/@nayadaurpk/afghanistan-the-40-year-war-and-counting-

181bcd0b5b50. Accessed 17 November 2021. 

Pazira, Nelofer. Act of Dishonour. (2009). 90-min. Canada/Afghanistan. Kandahar Films, Foundry 

Films, and Nomad Films. A co-production with the National Film Board of Canada. 

(English/Dari/English Sub-titles). 

Pazira, Nelofer and Jay, Paul. Return to Kandahar. (2003). 64-min. Canada/Afghanistan. Canadian 

Broadcasting Corporation (CBC); Ice Breaker Films; J. Films Inc. (English/Dari/English Sub-

titles). 

Punter, Jennie. (2010). 'Act of Dishonour: Afghans, Canadians and an honour killing.' The Globe 

and Mail. July 8, 2010. Accessed at: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/act-of-

dishonour-afghans-canadians-and-an-honour-killing/article1386737/. Accessed 4 October 2021. 

Rashid, Ahmed. (2008).  Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. London: 

I. B. Tauris. 

Rostami-Povey, Elaheh. (2007). Afghan Women: Identity and Invasion. London: Zed Books.  

Sanger, David E., and Shear, Michael D. (2021).  'Biden, Setting Afghanistan Withdrawal, Says 

"It is Time to End the Forever War."' The New York Times, April 14. 2021. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal.html. 

Accessed  20 December 2021. 

Skaine, Rosemarie. (2007). The Women of Afghanistan Under the Taliban. London: McFarland & 

Company, Inc. Publishers. 

Stewart, Frank Henderson.(1994).  Honor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/act-of-dishonour-afghans-canadians-and-an-honour-killing/article1386737/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/act-of-dishonour-afghans-canadians-and-an-honour-killing/article1386737/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/politics/biden-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal.html


 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
164 

The Daily Dawn. (2021). 'Taliban Enter Kabul, Ghani Flees.' 

https://www.dawn.com/news/1640905/taliban-enter-kabul-ashraf-ghani-flees. Accessed 16 

December 2021. 

Tokawa, Kenji Haakon. (2013). 'Taking Seriously the Power of Racialized Self-misrepresentation: 

Authenticity, White Supremacy and Consequence.' Ruptures: Anti-colonial & Anti-racist Feminist 

Theorizing. Wane, Njoki., Jagore, Jennifer., and Murad, Zahra.  (eds). Rotterdam: Sense 

Publishers. 

UN News. (2020). ‘Afghanistan: Civilian casualties exceed 10,000 for sixth straight year.’ 

February 22, 2020. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1057921. Accessed 15 December 2021. 

Valck, Marijke de, Kredell, Brendan, and Loist, Skadi. (2016) Film Festivals: History, Theory, 

Method, Practice. E-book: Routledge. 

Wahab, Shaista.  (2007). A Brief History of Afghanistan. Nebraska: University of Nebraska at 

Omaha Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection, and Barry Youngerman Facts on File Infobase 

Publishing.  

Ward, Lucy. (2001). ‘Cherie Blair Pleads for Afghan Women.’ The Guardian,  November 20, 

2001. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/nov/20/uk.september11. Accessed 12 

December 2021. 

Whimn, Jessica Rapana. (2018). 'Why the Suicide Rate is Higher for Women in Afghanistan.' New 

York Post, September 10, 2018. https://nypost.com/2018/09/10/why-the-suicide-rate-is-higher-

for-women-in-afghanistan. Accessed 5 November 2021. 



 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
165 

Wiacek, Elzbieta. (2020). 'Transnational Dimensions of Iranian Cinema: “accented films” by 

Mohsen Makhmalbaf.' “Studia Migracyjne–Przegląd Polonijny”, 3 (177): 61–84. 

https://www.ejournals.eu/Studia-Migracyjne/2020/3(177)/art/17899/. Accessed 12 December 

2021. 

Women’s UN Report Network. (2010). ‘Honour Killing Film-Afghanistan-Grim Reality.’ 

September 20, 2010. https://wunrn.com/2010/09/honour-killing-film-afghanistan-grim-reality/. 

Accessed 13 December 2021. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: 

This paper constitutes part of Dr Rahat Imran’s research for her forthcoming monograph on 
Afghan women filmmakers (Routledge Publishers). The paper is written during the author's Post-
doctoral Research Fellowship project at the Department of Film and Screen Media, University 
College Cork, Ireland. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 
research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 
837154. 

The author thanks Professor Laura Rascaroli for her feedback during the writing of this paper. 

 

ENDNOTES: 

 

1These included Munizae Jehangir (Search for Freedom 2003); Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Afghanistan Unveiled 2007); Samar Minallah (Dar Pa 

Dar: Afghan Refugee Women 2008) (Pakistan); Samira Makhmalbaf (At Five in the Afternoon 2003); Yassamin Maleknasr (Afghanistan, The 

Lost Truth 2003) (Iran); Saira Shah (Inside Afghanistan: Behind the Veil 2001) (Afghan diaspora). 

2For a listing of the various components of the 'Accented Style' of cinema as defined by Naficy, see Naficy, Hamid. (2001).  “Appendix A.” An 

Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 289. 

3Fatwa: Islamic religious edict. 

4The burqa is a head-to-toe garment, covering the face and the entire body with a mesh screen for eyes, worn by very conservative Muslim women 

in the sub-continent. In Afghanistan, the Taliban officially enforced the burqa for all women as a symbol of their fundamentalist policies.  

 

https://www.ejournals.eu/Studia-Migracyjne/2020/3(177)/art/17899/
https://wunrn.com/2010/09/honour-killing-film-afghanistan-grim-reality/


 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
166 

 

 

5For detailed data, see Jackson, A. (2009).  “The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict: 1978-2009.” Afghan Civil Society Forum, 2009. 

https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/afghanistan-the-cost-of-war_14.pdf. Accessed on 8 September 2021. 

6For figures on Afghan civilian casualties, see “Afghanistan: Civilian casualties exceed 10,000 for sixth straight year.” UN News. February 

22, 2020. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1057921. Accessed on 5 August 2021; Badalic, Vasja.  (2019). The War Against Civilians: 

Victims of the "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Victims and Victimology, 2019. E-book. 

7For figures on Afghan conflict-related casualties from 2001-2016, see Crawford, Neta C. ‘Costs of War.’ Watson Institute. Brown University, 

USA. 2016. 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2015/War%20in%20Afghanistan%20and%20Pakistan%20UPDATE_FINAL.pdf. 

Accessed on 10 September 2021. 

8Even the then British First lady,  Cherie Blair called for   ‘giving back a voice to the Afghan women.’ Similarly, the US First Lady at the time, 

Barbara Bush aired her propagandist support for Afghan women’s rights through a radio broadcast from the White House. Ward, Lucy. “Cherie 

Blair Pleads for Afghan Women.” The Guardian,  November 20, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/nov/20/uk.september11. 

Accessed on 12 July 2021. 

9The chador is a shawl worn loosely over the head and shoulders by Muslim women in the sub-continent, Afghanistan, and Iran. 

10A Google keyword search on “Afghanistan war documentaries” or films regarding the “Taliban” era suffices to track dozens of titles on the 

subject, with many available also on Amazon and IMDb for purchase and renting. Amazon. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-

EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-

XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022

724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e. Accessed on 24 

September 2021. 

IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=taliban Accessed on 20 September 2021. 

11Saira Shah’s film Beneath the Veil (2001) had shocked the world with secretly filmed footage passed on to her by an Afghan women's organization 

of a burqa-clad Afghan woman being shot to death in the Kabul football stadium by the Taliban for allegedly committing adultery. The shooting 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=afghanistan+war+documentaries&i=instant-video&adgrpid=80035559256&gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLATs0qJbEWUaj8qfvV5sXymNgRIctZ7d5m-XtDQLqbw3xyp_iArbARoC6BwQAvD_BwE&hvadid=389791249361&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007835&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8973022724965298195&hvtargid=kwd-434717170935&hydadcr=12316_1948794&tag=googiehydra-21&ref=pd_sl_2hgbzibnzf_e
https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=taliban


 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
167 

 

 

took place as male spectators looked on. For further discussion of the film, see Kramer, Martin. (2002). “The Camera and the Burqa.” Middle East 

Quarterly. Spring 2002. pgs-69-76. http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/the-camera-and-the-burqa/ . Accessed on 24 September 2021. 

12It is reported that 3000 people commit suicide in Afghanistan each year, 80 percent of whom are women. The reasons are largely gender-violence 

and oppressive socio-cultural norms such as under-age marriages. Saif, Shadi Khan. (2017).  “Around 3000 Afghans Commit Suicide Every Year.” 

Anadolu Agency, 17 September 2017.  

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/around-3-000-afghans-commit-suicide-every-year/912627. Accessed on 5 September 2021.  

13For detailed discussion on Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film Kandahar, see Graham, Mark. (2010). “The Burqa Films: Land Without Images: 

Kandahar.” Afghanistan in the Cinema. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 

14Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film  Kandahar paved the way for other filmmakers to focus on Afghanistan, including what I argue elsewhere were to be 

‘neighbour’ filmmakers from Pakistan and Iran looking in from their perspective. These filmmakers included Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy; Samar 

Minallah; Munizae Jehangir (Pakistan); Samira Makhmalbaf; Hanna Makhmalbaf, Yassamin Maleknasr (Iran). 

15Usamah Ansari notes: The co-director of this film and member of the J Films production company, Paul Jay, mentions in his ‘‘Director’s Notes’’ 

that he involved himself with the documentary after meeting Pazira in 2002 because Pazira’s story “‘‘had what great documentaries are made of--

-a compelling character, a dramatic individual story, set in an epic background. So, in the end, I couldn’t resist’’” (Jay, 2006). He also felt that 

“‘‘Nelofer’s search, and Dyana’s story, were a natural and powerful metaphor for the fate of the country and of Afghan women. Dyana’s letters are 

sad, desperate and poignant.’’” The relationship between Pazira and Jay in terms of control over the production and narrative process is unclear, 

although it is apparent that only Pazira’s cultural positioning (that is, her relationship with Afghanistan and personal investment in it) is laid bare 

for the audience. Indeed, the film requires a constant referencing to Pazira’s personal story and status as Afghani, while Jay’s own biography is 

entirely ignored.”” Ansari, Usamah. (2008). ““Should I Go and Pull Her Burqa Off?”: Feminist Compulsions, Insider Consent, and a Return to 

Kandahar.” Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 25, No. 1, 64. March 2008. Routledge. 

16For details on the emergence of the Taliban movement see Rashid, Ahmed. (2008). ‘Kandahar 1994: The Origins of the Taliban.’ Taliban: Islam, 

Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. New York: I. B. Tauris. 

17For further details on prevalent suicide rates among Afghan women, see: Whimn, Jessica Rapana. “Why the Suicide Rate is Higher for Women 

in Afghanistan.” New York Post, September 10, 2018. https://nypost.com/2018/09/10/why-the-suicide-rate-is-higher-for-women-in-afghanistan/. 

Accessed on 5 September 2021. 

18In 2004 Nelofer Pazira set up the Dyana Afghan Women’s Fund in Afghanistan. Since 2006 the Canadian-registered charity organization claims 

to have provided girls and women with education and skills training in the province of Bamiyan. For details of the organization visit:  

http://www.dawf.ca 

19In the interview, Nelofer Pazira claimed: “"Act of Dishonour" is about honour killing. It is based on the true-life story of a woman who acted in 

a short film that one of my friends made in Kabul. Her husband was in Pakistan at the time of the filming, but he returned to Kabul as the crew 

celebrated the completion of filming. He shot his wife dead because she had left her home and had acted in a film.” For Nelofer Pazira’s interview,  

see “Honour Killing Film-Afghanistan-Grim Reality.” Women’s UN Report Network, September 20, 2010. https://wunrn.com/2010/09/honour-

killing-film-afghanistan-grim-reality/ .Accessed on 13 September 2021. 

 

http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/the-camera-and-the-burqa/
https://wunrn.com/2010/09/honour-killing-film-afghanistan-grim-reality/
https://wunrn.com/2010/09/honour-killing-film-afghanistan-grim-reality/


 

 

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Rahat Imran 

 Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
168 

 

 

20For further discussion on the socio-cultural factors behind the victimization of women on the pretext of  'honour', and  ‘honour-killings’, see A.A. 

Hayat. (2002). ‘Honour Killings.’ Women: Victims of Social Evil. Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Security Management. Press Corporation of 

Pakistan; Stewart, Frank Henderson.  (1994). “Women.” Honor. London: University of Chicago Press. 

21For detailed discussion on the workings of the jirga system see Hassan M. Yousufzai and Ali Gohar. (2005). “The Context of Jirga.” Towards 

Understanding Pukhtoon Jirga. Just Peace International Publishers, Peshawar, Pakistan; Ali Wardak. (2003). “Concept and Definition of Jirga.” 

Jirga – A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan. Wales: University of Glamorgan. 

22The Hazaras are an ethnic Shiite Muslim sect that was part of  the Northern Alliance, comprising all major Afghan ethnic groups such as the 

Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Turkmen that formed a coalition of non-Pashtun parties in Afghanistan that resisted the Taliban regime, and succeeded 

in overthrowing their rule with American assistance in 2001. (The Northern Alliance coalition was also formally known as the United Front for the 

Liberation of Afghanistan). Tanner, Stephen. (2002). “The Rise of the Taliban.” Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the 

Fall of the Taliban. New York: Da Capo Press. 

For details on the north-south, Shia-Sunni ethnic and sectarian divide, and persecution and massacre of the Hazara’s by the Taliban, see Rashid, 

Ahmed. (2008). “Mazar-e-Sharif 1997: Massacre in the North.” Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. London: I.B.Tauris.. 

23Act of Dishonour has been screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival; Toronto Film Festival; Mannheim-Heidelberg International 

Film Festival (Winner Special Mention); Belgrade Film Festival. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1670620/releaseinfo. Accessed on 4 October 2021. 

24Punter, Jennie.  (2010). “Act of Dishonour: Afghans, Canadians and an honour killing.” The Globe and Mail. July 8. The Globe and Mail. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/act-of-dishonour-afghans-canadians-and-an-honour-killing/article1386737/.  Accessed on 4 

October 2021. 

25Kramer, Martin. (2002). Camera and the Burqa. https://martinkramer.org/reader/archives/the-camera-and-the-burqa/. Accessed on 11 October 

2021. 

26For reviews on Return to Kandahar, see Bullfrog Films: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/rtkan.html.  Accessed on 18 September 

2021. For review on Act of Dishonour, see: Punter, Jennie. (2010). “Act of Dishonour: Afghans, Canadians and an honour killing.” The 

Globe and Mail. July 8, 2010. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/act-of-dishonour-afghans-canadians-and-an-honour-

killing/article1386737/. Accessed on 4 October 2021; 

Mitchell, Elvis. (2001). “Veils of Tears Frame Lives in Kandahar.” Film Review, The New York Times. 14 December 14, 2001. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/movies/film-review-veils-of-tears-frame-lives-in-kandahar.html. Accessed on 2 October 2021. 

 

29Amiri, Ehsanullah and  Lubold, Gordon. “After the US’s Bagram Exit, Afghans Face the Taliban Alone.” The Wall Street Journal. July 5, 2021.  

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1670620/releaseinfo
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/movies/film-review-veils-of-tears-frame-lives-in-kandahar.html


 

  CINEJ Cinema Journal For Western Eyes: Nelofer Pazira's Accented Returns to Afghanistan 

Volume 11.1 (2023)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2023.463 |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
169 

 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-u-s-s-bagram-exit-afghans-face-the-taliban-alone-11625517960. Accessed on 2 August 2021. 

30The once dreaded warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum has also returned from exile in Turkey to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and secure 

what he believes to be his stronghold areas. Daily Dawn (AFP), August 6, 2021. https://www.dawn.com/news/1639074/abdul-rashid-dostum-back-

in-afghanistan-to-fight-for-besieged-home. Accessed on 6 August 2021. 

31The Times of India. “Back to old ways: Taliban forcing women to marry terrorists, give up their jobs.” August 23, 2021. 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/back-to-old-ways-taliban-forcing-women-to-marry-terrorists-give-up-their-

jobs/articleshow/85300503.cms. Accessed on 25 August  2021. 

32The Daily Dawn. “Taliban Enter Kabul, Ghani Flees.” https://www.dawn.com/news/1640905/taliban-enter-kabul-ashraf-ghani-flees. Accessed 

on 6 August 2021. 

33Horton, Alex. (2021). “This U.S. soldier’s boots were the last on the ground in Afghanistan.” The Washington Post. August 31, 2021. 

Accessed at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/31/christopher-donahue-last-soldier-afghanistan-night-vision/.  Accessed 

on 5 September 2021. 

34Caliph is a title used for an Islamic religio-political leader who is entrusted with supreme control.