Director Havana Marking chronicles Afghanistan's wildly popular version of American Idol in her documentary premiering this month on HBO.
Donning white suits and diamond-studded hijabs, young liberal Afghans gather in Kabul to compete for a singing title. Marking's cameras follow the contestants, audience-members, and the host during a season of the televised pop-idol show.
The show breaks social barriers in a country that is rife with them. Less than a decade ago, under the Taliban, music and dancing were forbidden. When the regime fell in 2001, the restrictions were lifted. Singing and the music industry gradually returned to the country, while dancing - especially by women - remains highly controversial.
A scene from the film evokes Elvis Presley's 1956 hip-shaking performance on the Ed Sullivan Show: a young Afghan girl from a conservative Muslim region of the country, while performing on Afghan Star, defiantly casts off her headscarf and dances on stage as the audience gasps. Muslim fundamentalists on the streets of the girl's hometown say "she should be killed for what she has done."
Later an Afghan family claps to their young daughter's dancing. Women in the family attend the filming of Afghan Star in Kabul and cheer on the singers with their heads uncovered.
Marking says "she wants the film to show that Islam in Afghanistan is not so black and white, but many shades."
The film reveals the deep ideological differences that accompany the various shades of Islam in Afghanistan, and polarize the country's different regions and ethnic groups.
Marking depicts the televised contest as a microcosm for democracy. The singers compare themselves to politicians and belt out songs that call for national unity and brotherhood. Localized groups corral campaigns for contestants they support. Millions of fans cast votes, and some say that "voting for an Afghan Star is more fun than parliamentary voting."
Farida Tahada, a female contestant, was even recently elected to the Kabul Provincial Council.
Marking's documentary humanizes the conflict in Afghanistan. It gives us the faces we don't see and the stories we don't hear in newspaper articles about soldiers and war. Above all, the film reminds us who and what our troops are fighting for in Afghanistan.
The HBO documentary Afghan Star premieres this month on HBO.
