“We need help.” Guests of the Festival of Asian Cinemas (Fica) in Vesoul (Haute-Saône), several Afghan directors in exile called on Friday to maintain and increase aid to their compatriots, six months after the Taliban took power in Kabul. .
“I still and always receive calls for help. Unfortunately, after the promises of evacuation, we forgot. These people have been forgotten, it’s absolute silence”deplores the multi-award-winning director Atiq Rahimi, a refugee in France for nearly forty years, but who has always maintained his ties with his native land.
With his Afghan counterpart Siddiq Barmak and the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, he is at the origin of an appeal broadcast last summer to come to the aid of the Afghan population, and particularly artists and intellectuals, among the most threatened.
“In the markets, there are mothers who sell their children because of hunger, because they have nothing to feed them”testifies Mohsen Makhmalbaf, dark look behind his thin glasses. “There are artists who change accommodation every day to hide, who can no longer work. It’s the voice of the country that is disappearing.” Director of a dozen films on Afghanistan, he came to present Kandahara 2001 feature film distinguished at Cannes, which evokes the distress of the population after the first seizure of power by the Taliban, in 1996.
“I made this film 20 years ago. You might think it’s about the past, but not at all: it’s about the present and the future of Afghanistan, because the country is going backwards”, he is alarmed. Mohsen Makhmalbaf evokes a list of 800 personalities in danger, sent in July to the French authorities. “There are 302 who have been evacuated, including 254 to France, and I am grateful for that to President Macron”, explains the filmmaker who now lives in the United Kingdom. But he worries about the fate of others. “We still need help”he insists.
On the forecourt of the Majestic cinema, which hosts the festival, the artist Soraya Akhlaqi writes “No to the Taliban” in letters of blood during a performance dedicated to women. “The Taliban deny Afghan women the most basic rights, they can no longer appear in public, work or travel without a male companion”, says the director. “I ask you never to recognize this regime as legitimate,” she urges.
His presence at the festival is a victory for the organizers. “The steps took me longer to bring two Afghans than to bring all the 58 other guests”, explains Martine Thérouanne, the director of Fica. “But it is not linked to Afghanistan: these two artists now reside in Iran. the hexagon”she laments, denouncing the “double speech” of Paris on the reception of Afghan refugees.
The public appreciates the abundant program of the festival, its 84 films offered over a week, and this focus on Afghan society. “A week ago, I was working with an Afghan, and suddenly, I was curious to come here”testifies Anthony Fellman, 36, a temporary worker at the Peugeot plant in Vesoul. “These films shed light on what could have happened to my colleague”he explains, leaving the projection of Osamaa film by Siddiq Barmak, which evokes the fate of a 12-year-old Afghan girl whose mother dresses as a boy so that she can work. “This festival is a great way to better understand the world and better understand people”, he concludes.