Nelofer Pazira's work takes the makers of the film, some of the cast, and the viewers to a village in northern Afghanistan, near the Afghan-Tajik border, where the people who live there, by definition amateur actors, join them - in realising this movie as an experience for everyone involved.
The story is more than the interplay of the fictive and part-fictive characters, or the plot in a narrow sense. When you shoot something on film, you are always a part of the story, be your interest fiction or non-fiction, and in fact the two categories can never be so clearly separated. This somewhat trivial statement holds very true in Afghanistan and also for director Nelofer Pazira's past work which has always been in acknowledgement of this (for an example, her earlier documentary "Audition" is very much recommended at this point, also given how it is related to this movie in several ways).
That said, maybe you should just forget what I wrote up to this point, because this film is first of all a movie. It can be enjoyed and reflected on as such. You will get to know a good deal about life in a village in northern Afghanistan. It is just that the people in the story, including the Afghan villagers, are not merely "people-unto-themselves" here, as you encounter them reading shallow news reports on the country, but "people-for-themselves," if I may put it that way. Real human beings whose motivations the movie challenges you to understand. And perhaps this challenge works so well exactly because of the blending of fiction and non-fiction that is constantly there underneath the surface of its plot.
The story is more than the interplay of the fictive and part-fictive characters, or the plot in a narrow sense. When you shoot something on film, you are always a part of the story, be your interest fiction or non-fiction, and in fact the two categories can never be so clearly separated. This somewhat trivial statement holds very true in Afghanistan and also for director Nelofer Pazira's past work which has always been in acknowledgement of this (for an example, her earlier documentary "Audition" is very much recommended at this point, also given how it is related to this movie in several ways).
That said, maybe you should just forget what I wrote up to this point, because this film is first of all a movie. It can be enjoyed and reflected on as such. You will get to know a good deal about life in a village in northern Afghanistan. It is just that the people in the story, including the Afghan villagers, are not merely "people-unto-themselves" here, as you encounter them reading shallow news reports on the country, but "people-for-themselves," if I may put it that way. Real human beings whose motivations the movie challenges you to understand. And perhaps this challenge works so well exactly because of the blending of fiction and non-fiction that is constantly there underneath the surface of its plot.