Three Songs for Benazir

Three Songs for Benazir is an incredibly intimate film about young love in the midst of ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan. Set for the most part in a refugee camp, the film conveys so much and is an essential watch for anyone who has any interest in Afghanistan. With the Taliban takeover last year, this film couldn't be more relevant.

Told through the perspective of Shaista, a young man (still a teenager), we understand what aspirations can be in the most challenging of circumstances:-- how it can break you, and that life, ultimately, is a struggle.

Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei have created a beautiful poem and ode to the people of Afghanistan.

This short documentary film is an emotional rollercoaster packing a powerful love story and a quick glimpse into the disturbing reign of the Taliban into 22 minutes. In the time it takes to get a coffee at the Starbucks drive through you can feel the love, hope, pain, and despair of this young couple in Afghanistan.

A reminder that love is universal despite the political and cultural environment that surrounds you. It is a beautiful film full of truth and honor telling the story of a real Afghan couple that you won't see in the media.

It is a must-see for every American who feels disconnected because the media only highlights the war. A reminder that there are innocent citizens living their lives in Afghanistan, beautiful people who lead with their brave and courageous hearts.

I only hope that Benazir has found peace and comfort in her tumultuous life.

This is a 22 minute documentary that briefly tells an ordinary love story of an Afghan couple that was displaced by the American invasion. The husband struggles to find work-he tries to join the Afghan army-and various other struggles in life. Despite its shortness the love between the husband and wife come through in stark terms. As does the sheer struggle their lives have been-the film is not political but it's hard to not see the American failure made manifest in this film.

Jesus I hope they are still alive. Americans need to think long and hard before we use the military ever again.

The movie itself is beautiful - a concise portrait of broken hopes, ending in an ultimately resilient note of fighting against an additional adversity: addiction. Shaista has an innocent, cheerful twinkle in his eye that becomes duller over time, until we see him a "grown" man. Grown into accepting his circumstances, into abandoning his youthful dreans. For all of us who grew in the Global South, the portrayal feels real beyond words.

But there's one thing I can't get over, and it's the fact that the movie and its producers don't serm to have made it a point to actually help Benazir and Shaista. It's one thing to record their troubles as faithfully as possible, without intervening, but was it necessary to keep them in obscurity after the film came out? The official website for the movie doesn't even profile them, or offer any ways to help them out. There's no GoFundMe, no mention of what happened to them after the film, not enough credit to them as the living, breathing protagonists of this story.

I don't know about Shaista and Benazir, but if I had a movie made about how difficult my life is, and that movie got all the way to the Oscars, and that success didn't make my life a bit easier at least, I'd feel cheated. Their reality was shared, but was it improved? It certainly was improved for the makers of the film, and so it should have been for its subjects. I'm not sure if they helped them in ways not shown in the documentary, but from what is visible they could have done much, much more. Otherwise this film takes a prentended tone of impartiality that just feels outright exploitative.

Where are Benazir and Shaista, whose voices and faces were seen accross the world; whose story was sold and rented, now?

I wish it was longer and provided more depth about the four year lapse but still captured the beauty of love, the cruelty of the war, the hope of a family through the eyes of a small family. Little boy's tiny hand holding his dad's finger and those bare feet are so dramatic. Hope they have a happy ending.