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FIREDANCER
Directed & Written by: Jawed Wassel.
Produced by: Khaled Wassel, John G. Roche & Kate Wood.
Director of Photography: Bud Gardner.
Edited by: Bill Gerstenmeier, Lizzie Donahue & Jeff Marcello.
Music by: Wayne Sharpe & Bruce Hathaway.
Released by: Silkroad Pictures.
Language: English & Pashto.
Country of Origin: USA. 80 min. Not Rated.
With: Baktash Zaher-Khadem, Mariam Weiss & Yunis Azizi.

Haris (Zaher-Khadem), a successful painter, is haunted by his past, literally seeing ghosts. At his father’s urging, he fled Afghanistan as a boy during the Soviet invasion. Both his parents were killed. Now fully assimilated, he is cut-off from his culture. Meanwhile, in an Afghani enclave, Laili (Weiss), an up-and-coming fashion designer, is angered by her parents’ attempts to arrange a marriage between her and a Neanderthal. She wants to marry a man she loves, even if he isn’t Afghani. Abruptly, Haris and Laila meet. It is only a matter of time until her resistance to his charms wears down. But it is the conflict between Laila’s independence and the dictates of her male-dominated family that is the most interesting and heartfelt theme in the movie. She is the eldest child, yet she has to obey even her younger brother.

Although at times the acting is self-conscious and the staging awkward, the film has a healthy sense of humor as gossip spreads like wildfire throughout Laila’s neighborhood by telephone (think Bye Bye Birdie). But at a very brief 80 minutes, there is sense of incompleteness - character transitions don’t make sense, with the plot taking sudden and inexplicable turns. (A subplot involving Laila’s father becomes wildly melodramatic.)

Set in New York City and surrounding suburbs pre-9/11 (the World Trade Center ironically appears in the skyline), FireDancer was Afghanistan’s first submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. The first and only feature film by director Jawed Wassel, who was murdered during post-production, FireDancer’s behind-the-scenes background is as interesting, if not more so, than the film itself. Kent Turner
June 4, 2004