My Childhood, My Country (2021) Film Review
It’s almost ironic that at the moment I’m writing the review for My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan, U.S. troops have officially ended their presence in Afghanistan. This marks the end of a conflict that’s lasted too long. Almost the time it has taken two filmmakers to make the documentary about Mir Hussain. This could be an event that brings peace. But it’s not. Considering what’s been happening for weeks, it’s unsettling we can’t exactly know if Mir is OK.
As credits rolled on the film, I ran out of breath. A hopeful ending that doesn’t apply for the latest events. Only minutes before, Mir and his wife discussed on camera if the Taliban settlement was going to be a good thing. I can only hope for the best.
My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan is a documentary that’s been shooting for more than twenty years. In fact you may have seen something related as the directors have been releasing footage in the form of movies in the last decades. However, this is the one that tells it all. A sort of Boyhood in a battlefield that mixes extreme realism with the dangers of living in a place that exists today, but tomorrow it could be a rubble site.
Mir Hussain is our subject, and he goes from being the innocent and beautiful boy who’s smiling all the time, to the father that can’t exactly be what he wants to be and what his family needs him to be. The place is Afghanistan, a country that’s been the site for a war that’s still taking place today. Decades of footage edited together in a film that’s endearing as it is emotionally striking.
The film tells the journey of Mir, the boy who wanted to be a president and change the world. To make it a better place. The first years of his life he had to stay hidden with his family in caves until it was safe to go to the house he grew up in. A house that ended up being a pile of mud.
However, the film doesn’t stay in the overly melancholic side of Mir’s childhood. He becomes a man, one that gets married and has kids of his own. Being a camera subject for most of his life, he ends up working as a cameraman. This is when the film takes a dark turn, as the most civilized stage of Mir’s life becomes far too dangerous: he needs to shoot suicide bombings.
My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan mixes Mir’s testimonies with real news that are shown in worldwide outlets. When every station went ahead and showed politicians getting together, and violent radicals killing people, we never got to see who was in the middle of it all. Mir’s story is only one of many. The real victims of the conflict were never given a voice. Being able to see Mir’s story is something to celebrate amidst the impotence of a viewer that connects with the struggle of a man who we wish wasn’t there.
When it comes to documentaries showing the truth about conflicts, we don’t only need to see the violence that’s part of the lives of people we don’t know personally. We should also take the time to know them and see they aren’t that different from us. They aren’t strangers who practice another religion. They are dreamers. Just like us.
Thanks for this most insightful documentary. It is well presented and narrated in the beautiful country of Afghanistan. May the intelligent and hard working people of Afghanistan survive the odds and rebuild their country again. Sadly, centuries of traditions, family values, and natural living have been destroyed by Western greed and capitalism.