'25 Years in Afghanistan' Review: Mir's Optimism Darkens
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- "25 Years in Afghanistan" is a documentary by Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi, an updated reversioning of their 2021 Bafta-winning film "My Childhood, My Country – 20 Years in Afghanistan," first documenting Mir Hussain's life beginning in 2002
- Mir Hussain grew up in Bamiyan province in grinding poverty — living in a cave, missing school to plough fields and work in coalmines — before becoming a camera operator in Kabul, specialising in filming suicide bombing aftermath and live sport
- The film intersperses Mir's family struggles with speeches from George W Bush, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, while his mother Murwarid says "I never thought I'd end up eating grass,"
- The 2021 US troop withdrawal announced by President Biden allowed the Taliban to return to power, and the reviewer notes the earlier footage now reads as "foreshadowing" of that betrayal
- In 2026-recorded portions, Shukria says Mir "has gone backwards" — his TV work dried up, he's back to manual labour, and "we are all stuck in this backwardness"; she also expresses regret over their fourth child, a daughter
- The directors' decision to help Mir find work as a camera operator raises an ethics question the reviewer flags — whether shaping the subject's trajectory crosses a line when filmmakers are already influencing their subjects by their constant presence
Why it matters: By compressing 25 years into one film, the documentary offers a rare longitudinal portrait of how the Taliban's 2021 return dismantled the modest gains one Afghan family had built — Mir lost his television career and returned to manual labour, while his wife, raising four children, laments being "stuck in this backwardness" with no path forward.
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