Kandahar - disturbing visuals

This film is an unblinking glimpse into the hardships of life in Afghanistan, and the difficult odyssey of one woman in particular. Inspired by a true story, "Kandahar" tells the story of Nafas (Nelofer Pazira) an Afghani woman who has been living in Canada and working as a journalist when she recieves a disturbing letter from her sister, who has remained in Afghanistan.

Her sister, who has been maimed by a land mine, writes of the oppressive treatment of women and says that she will commit suicide when the next eclipse happens. With only three days until the eclipse, Nafas attemps to travel to Kandahar, a difficult undertaking in a country where women are forbidden to travel alone and are forced to wear the head-to-toe burkha.

Nafas first travels with an Afghani family, posing as one of the several wives, until bandits leave her abandoned. Then she hires a boy expelled from a Koran school to be her guide, until she becomes sick after drinking tainted water and then meets a black American man working in a small village as a doctor. They travel on and Nafas' journey comes to an end on a somber note.

Makhmalbaf's film extracts a poetic lyricism from the meagerness of the setting. There are many moments of compositional grace, such as when Nafas lifts her burkha and answers an interrogator's questions, with light from the mesh creating a shadow pattern across her face, and when dozens of women in burkhas of various colors move forward in a bridal procession across the desert. There's even surreallism when prosthetic legs for land mine victims at a red cross camp parachute to the ground.

One truly feels for Nafas as she tries to reach her sister and there's also a strong poignancy in the scene depicting the closing of a school for girls, where the last lesson is in avoiding land mines.

Filmed under arduous conditions in a village on the Iran-Afghanistan border, "Kandahar" went on to win the Ecumenical Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. For a look at the country at the center of the news that provides far more information than a CNN soundbite, "Kandahar" should be seen.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - film by a man with a great spine

One of the most controversial and provocative films of the year, Fahrenheit 9/11 is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's searing examination of the Bush administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events of 9/11.

With his characteristic humor and dogged commitment to uncovering the facts, Moore considers the presidency of George W. Bush and where it has led us. He looks at how - and why - Bush and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saudi connection to 9/11, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and Saudi money had funded Al Qaeda. Fahrenheit 9/11 shows us a nation kept in constant fear by FBI alerts and lulled into accepting a piece of legislation, the USA Patriot Act, that infringes on basic civil rights. It is in this atmosphere of confusion, suspicion and dread that the Bush Administration makes its headlong rush towards war in Iraq - and Fahrenheit 9/11 takes us inside that war to tell the stories we haven't heard, illustrating the awful human cost to U.S. soldiers and their families.