Avaliações de usuários

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.

While it is important to talk about the situation in Afghanistan, it has so much more potential than what this short film portrayed.

I feel like I missed something crucial, because there is a wide gap that is unfilled. In the end, you get the picture, but it would have been better to witness what had happened.

Overall, this film does not show the grave issues of what it means to live there in these troubled times, hence 6/10.

Three Songs for Benazir (original title is in Afghan), 2021, 22 minutes.

Afghan short film directed by Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei, which is nominated for the 2022 Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film.

It follows the story of Shaista, a young Afghan man, recently married to Benazir, for whom he sings some songs that describe the daily life of a woman. They live in a precarious Afghan refugee camp, in precarious conditions. Shaista dreams of serving his country by enlisting in the Afghan army, but finds it difficult to be semi-literate and have to ask someone in the family to fill out the enlistment forms, taking responsibility for him and his actions in the army. No one in the family agrees with the enlistment, as they fear retaliation against everyone in the tribe by the Taliban. He is induced by his father to go to work in the opium harvest, where he becomes an addicted, as he eats the poppy seeds throughout the harvest. The film jumps four years. Shaista is in an addiction recovery center, where he is visited by Benazir and his two children. There, he sings one more song for Benazir.

It is a sad documentary, where the dreams of a better life for him and his family are thwarted by a decision of his family members. Despite all the struggle, of personal defeats, love prevails.

The documentary could further explore the story of Benazir, which only serves to give the film its name.

I sort of found this a bit lifeless and flat. I think it's interesting to see the way different people have to live and I think it's important that privileged people have their eyes opened to other ways of life.

But this just didn't have anything more than that. I'm actually sort of confused with what I watch because nothing happened or maybe I was not paying attention.

This documentary portraits the wounds and the despair in a country where war has been dominated for decades.

But nonetheless, it also sketches beautifully the innocence, love, ambitions, dreams and vulnerability of the young Afghan generation that is overshadowed by the clouds of war..

Heartbreaking but beautifully captured.

It's ok for the most part of it, but the lack of any depth and that ending prevent me for giving it a positive rating. I couldn't even understand why the cameraman didn't give her some shoes or what exactly happened in those years.

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.

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.

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.

A beautiful movie with a strong story from the depth of the Afghan Society. It amazingly showcases the struggle of a young Afghan boy who despite manny challenges never forgets to love his family and keep working for his dream. Now that Afghanistan lost his National Army it matters even more to remember all those youths who fought for their country for the last 20 years.

This film would be a great lesson for manny, must watch.

What a warm and expressive face he has. I was very moved, and loved them both. Wish the film were longer and that we could know how they are doing today. They put faces to my worries during the years we were there and after we left Afghanistan.

Life is a journey and it's a lesson we learn often too late. This beautiful, striking story floods you with a range of emotion and so fully immerses you into a world that most people outside of Afghanistan either don't know or know little about. The filmmaker's unapologetic manner of showing us this family's journey moved me deeply and the film has stuck in my mind and is not one I shall ever forget. To me, that says it all.

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?

So cute, simple, delicate, real, painful, tragic, simple, passionate, real... I would like you to delve a little deeper into Benazir's motivations for joining the Afghan army and "abandoning" his wife and baby son, I know he will in addition to his love for his country and the possibility of giving a little better life to both of them, as he had faced the whole family and community, which did not support him... Beautiful documentary...

I send God's blessings for all involved in bringing this to me. I watched it on Netflix and your struggle brought me to years. My heart and soul is with you all.... May Abba, Allah, God almighty being you all through. Your courage is inspirational.....have faith and keep going...you are NEVER ALONE. ...

An extraordinary and interesting work of art that shows the realities and difficulties of a society. What you see in this short film is very natural and attractive. In this short film, you can see the excellent work of the producer, director, cinematographer, sound engineer, and especially the extremely beautiful acting of the actors. This is a great success for the entire team of three Songs for Benazir. I congratulation to the talented woman Mrs. Elizabeth Mirzaei and to the wonderful man Gulistan Mirzaei for such a wonderful work.

Such a beautiful movie, it showed competly different side of afghansistan, through this camera you can see there is always love even in darkest part of the world, i truly admire the story and the film.

It's pretty heartbreaking watching this guy struggle to build a life for himself, dreaming of becoming a soldier and probably aiming to feel some pride, only for it to be quashed so brutally by his relatives and tribesmen. And it's even more heartbreaking when you think that they would be right. In the meantime the Taliban took over the country and for sure they would have hunted down soldiers of the former regime and all their affiliates. And it's sad that the only alternative for a man with no skills, no education and clearly no prospects, living in a refugee camp in Kabul is to be an opium harvester. And become and addict in the process.

At least he has a loving wife looks like.

This is a gem of a film, a 22 minute pure vérité short documentary that took 6 years to shoot. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2020 for best short documentary and remarkably found its way into Netflix.

The filmmakers followed a young Afghan couple, Shaista and Benazir, living in a camp for displaced people in Kabul under the watch of the ever present surveillance airship. It is impressive how much is told in only 22 minutes, with no narration or interviews - just fly-on-the-wall observational cinematography. In this film, we see a trapped young man, intelligent and full of life, who is not allowed to "fly" due to his circumstances, very much like the caged birds so often shown in the film. This story of young love and dreams in an impossible situation is told with tenderness and candor, marked by three songs Shaista sang to Benazir.

I love the title Three Songs for Benazir.

Every song he sings, his situation has changed, but his hearth grows fonder. It gives you a view of what love looks like. Not the kind of love that starts on the mountain and falls slowly, but the kind that starts on the ground but hits the sky. Many ways to perceive this documentary, but for me it is the best romance movie of the century.

It was probably appropriate that Gulistan and Elizabeth Mirzaei's Academy Award-nominated "Three Songs for Benazir" got released right before the Taliban retook Afghanistan. This look at a man and a woman in a camp for displaced people in Kabul shows the misery in their lives, but also how they do what they can to cheer each other up. A lot of the focus is on the man's effort to join the national army.

The Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan in 2021 serves as a reminder of why that country gets called the Graveyard of Empires. The US mistakenly thought that it could accomplish what Alexander the Great, the British and the USSR couldn't. An entire generation of Afghans grew up knowing only the US's occupation, and will now grow up under the Taliban's iron-fisted, misogynistic regime.

Anyway, great documentary.