Shahrbanoo Sadat described chaotic scenes as he queued outside Kabul airport.
Paris:
Hours before the Taliban took control of Kabul, filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat received an offer to leave Afghanistan. She refused, as it would mean leaving relatives behind.
The next day he went to the bank.
“(Suddenly) we saw Taliban cars with white flags … and … we are running,” Sadat told Reuters in an interview. “And it was for me like a moment in a movie that couldn’t be real because it was right in the middle of Kabul.”
Accompanied by nine family members, Sadat, whose first feature film “Wolf and Sheep” won the top prize in the Directors ’Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, finally headed to Kabul Airport. They arrived in Paris earlier this week.
“I was lucky, but that’s not the situation for a lot of people,” he said, referring to the crowds trapped at the airport. “They don’t speak English, they’re not filmmakers, they don’t have international friends and their lives are in danger.”
Sadat said it had been 72 hours since he left his apartment to reach French troops at Kabul airport, where he spent one night at his compound before flying to Abu Dhabi.
He described chaotic scenes as he queued outside the airport.
“(The Taliban) wanted to (queue up for people) which was impossible because the crowd was pushing from all directions and the Taliban were walking with cables and guns and even with (a) role play,” he said. .
“The kids were crying and the old ones were fainting … because it was very hot.”
Overwhelmed by the heat and the slow pace, Sadat said she almost stopped queuing, but was encouraged to continue with her sister.
Sadat said he saw men, including his father, standing out amid rumors of attacks.
“(A Taliban member) wanted to take him out and I threw myself at my father and he hit me with the cable he had on his back … they were so aggressive with men, but they didn’t really touch women,” she said. he said. “He let us go.”
Kabul airport has been full of Afghans trying to embark on evacuation flights after the Taliban’s acquisition, for fear of reprisals and a return to a harsh version of Islamic law that the group practiced when he was the last in power.
Dozens were killed in a suicide attack by the Islamic State.
The Taliban have tried to reassure the Kabul airport crowds that they have nothing to fear and that they should return home.
Sadat, who was born in Iran and moved to Afghanistan in December 2001, was working on a romantic comedy before fleeing.
“I have all kinds of mixed feelings … I don’t understand all this. Everything was so sudden and so fast,” said Sadat, whose films depict ordinary life.
“I want to keep making movies, but maybe my point of view has changed … The political thing shifted me, so I can no longer ignore it because it hurts me.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)