Post September 11, Mohsen Makhmalbaf tracks the children who do not attend school in the border villages between Iran and Afghanistan with his digital camera and questions why they are not being educated. He finds girls studying in UNICEF classes in one region. One of the girls is not willing to come out of her burqa despite the fact that she has run away from Afghanistan and the Taliban are not present here. She is more afraid of the horrifying god that the Taliban have created more than the Taliban. The teacher tries… Director's commentary: The Taliban was not a political regime in Afghanistan but they are still a culture. Bombarding can ruin a political regime but it cannot change a culture. You cannot free a woman whom is imprisoned in the burqa with a rocket. The Afghan girl needs education. She doesn’t know that she doesn’t know. She is imprisoned but she does not know that she is a prisoner of poverty, ignorance, prejudice, male chauvinism and superstition. 95% of the women and 80% of the men in Afghanistan did not have the chance to attend school even before the Taliban. The film seeks the lost key to be able to open the lock of the cultural problems of Afghanistan. From the IMDB: In 2002 about 3 million Afghan Refugee were living in Iran. From those about 700,000 were Afghan Children who were not allowed to go to Iranian schools because of their illegal status in Iran. After this movie was made, this subject became controversial and finally the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) passed a bill in which the Afghani children were allowed to go to school and it resulted in 500,000 kids getting education.
In an abandoned theater, French actress Marina Vlady recites from Borges'"The Immortal"... Japanese research scientist Shin Kubota sings praises to the"immortal jellyfish"... Milan Duomo workers subject the cathedral's exquisite statues to perpetual regeneration... Swiss musician/inventors Felix Rohner and Sabina Sch?rer persistently refine their percussion instrument, the Hang... Native American community leaders Leola One Feather and Moses Brings Plenty preserve the centuries-old spiritual resistance of their tribe...Filmmakers Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti pay tribute to humankind's aspirations for immortality by showing us a portrait of our efforts to overcome our own limits. They share their discoveries in a visual symphony to the power and harmony of nature's elements: water, earth, air and fire. From Milan to Wounded Knee, USA, from Bern to Shirahama, Japan, the traces of the filmmakers' travels spiral into a symbol of perfection and infinity: Spira Mirabilis.
