My Childhood, My Country, 20 Years in Afghanistan

Streaming video - 2021

Award-winning filmmakers Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi release a real-life epic of boyhood and manhood – they follow Mir and his familyfilmed across twenty years in one of the most embattled corners of the globe. They form a portrait of embattled Afghanistan that no other film has ever captured. War, politics, poverty, and heartbreak – all seen from the level of a child frolicking in a muddy, bullet-laden pool, playing soccer on a dirt pitch, and forgoing school to work ploughing in the fields, collecting wood from mountain tops, or digging coal in perilous mines, all at subsistence wages to support his family. The innocence and optimism of Mir contrasts with carefully selected contemporary news footage that also offers sobering comme...nts of leading soldiers, politicians, and journalists offering their own insights into what is going wrong and what is going right. After more than a trillion dollars spent by 40 countries, and countless lives lost, was the cost worth it – for Mir and the world? The film lets the viewer decide. more