Tell Spring Not to Come This Year
by Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy
UK, 2015
streaming regions: GLOBAL with some exceptions
synopsis
When NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan the Afghan National Army (ANA) took over control of Helmand Province, an extremely dangerous region where attacks by Taliban fighters are the order of the day. Security, much less peace, would seem to be unattainable; it is even difficult to find a common language in a country where everyone mistrusts each other. The directors of this film accompanied an ANA company during a year of frontline duty in Helmand. The soldiers are paid irregularly, there are not enough supplies and their equipment is substandard. They cannot fight a war with the equipment left behind by the ISAF. Saeed Taji Farouky’s cinemascope images lend an epic dimension to the soldiers’ daily lives, and the private moments and bloody battles feel like a metaphor for the fate of this war-torn country. In off-screen interviews, the protagonists talk about their doubts, their hopes and their dreams. At the same time the films shows the absurdity of the conflict from the point of view of these Afghan soldiers, in a country whose government is at the mercy of an enemy that even NATO troops did not succeed in defeating in almost thirteen years.
about the director
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian / British filmmaker who has been making films around themes of conflict, human rights, and colonialism since 2005.
His latest feature documentary, A Thousand Fires premiered as the opening film in Directors Fortnight of the Locarno Film Festival 2021 where it won the Marco Zucchi award for most innovative documentary.
Farouky is also a radical film educator, regularly teaching, leading workshops, and lecturing about political cinema. He is designer and lead tutor of the Radical Film School, a free film course based in London dedicated to developing political filmmakers from marginalised backgrounds.
Michael McEvoy is a documentary filmmaker, anthropologist, and conflict researcher. He has worked in humanitarian aid, as a journalist, and as a field researcher in the Middle East, West and Central Africa, Latin America and Central Asia. In recent years he has been exploring indigenous epistemologies and cross-cultural approaches to more participatory and holistic forms of governance and conflict resolution.
