What We Left Unfinished (2019) dir. Mariam Ghani

WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED tells the story of five unfinished fiction feature films from the Communist era in Afghanistan (19781991), and the people who went to crazy lengths to make them, in a time when films were weapons, filmmakers became targets, and the dreams of constantly shifting political regimes merged with the stories told onscreen. This tightknit group of Afghan filmmakers loved cinema enough to risk their lives for art. Despite government interference, censorship boards, scarce resources, armed opposition, and nearconstant threats of arrest or even death, they made films that were subversive and, in the filmmakers opinions, always true to life. All five films THE APRIL REVOLUTION, DOWNFALL, THE BLACK DIAMOND, WRONG WAY, and AGENT completed principal photography before being canceled by the state or abandoned by the filmmakers.