Cinema Pameer

Contemporary Afghan society is portrayed through the staff at Cinema Pameer: its incertitude, challenges and noticeable insecurity.

The theater manager Said Chaleh does not want to tell his neighbors or his relatives what he works with. Working with film is controversial in the troubled city of Kabul, where most people have been marked by the drawn-out war. For many of its visitors, the theater is a much-needed oasis, but the problems are many. While the staff does its best to free the theater of negative associations as a hotbed for drugs and secret love encounters, they also try to defend themselves against the constant threat from outside, which becomes exceptionally clear when a bomb suddenly detonates.

• Tobias Åkesson