Director Ibrahim Nash’at and producer Odessa Rae on their nerve-racking journey to film inside the glamorously named former American base
A Taliban fighter stands guard as people move past him at a market in Kabul in 2021. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images, ending its military presence there after two decades. The exit was as hasty as the invasion was protracted. The Taliban swiftly and officially regained control of the country, two weeks after marching into Kabul, the capital, with little or no resistance.
Egyptian director Ibrahim Nash'at: 'When I saw Hollywoodgate I knew that this is the story that I was meant to tell, this is the movie I was meant to make.' Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images/AFP This remarkable access — the journalist shot for a year — was tempered by a series of demands. Nash’at was forbidden from filming outside the complex; nor could he interview Afghan citizens. The Taliban commander, meanwhile, expressed a simple, chilling rule for the documentarian: “If his intentions are bad, he will die soon.”
“It was worrisome,” the Canadian producer says. “I’ve dealt with this quite a bit on different films. We had many sleepless nights. We didn’t only have Ibrahim. We had to evacuate our translator, Adel Safi, from Afghanistan. Thankfully, I had my connections through Navalny. We did a screening at the European Union, and that gave me access to the vice-president of the European Union.
The Taliban initially imagined that Hollywoodgate would serve as a glorious chronicle of their new regime. The final cut couldn’t be further from that aspiration
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