When British film-maker Phil Grabsky arrived in Afghanistan almost a decade ago, he didn’t know what to expect.

The Boy Mir is the fruit of extraordinary persistence from Grabsky and his team who succeeded against the odds to provide an unprecedented perspective into life in one of the world’s poorest countries.

David Cox caught up with Grabsky to talk about his experiences and what he hopes viewers will take away from the film

David Cox: What first inspired you to film in Afghanistan ?

Phil Grabsky:  To some extent you’re always waiting to feel passionate about something, to feel interested about something   In 2001, everyone was watching the Buddhas being destroyed in March and then of course all the events through to September and then in Afghanistan, all the changes that happened in November with the foreign aided, temporary eviction of the Taliban and I guess I was just sitting her in Brighton thinking ‘I wonder who Afghans really are ?’  They’ve had 25 year of civil war but were all talked about in such a general way – and I thought well, go and find out !

Tell us about your experiences when you first arrived in Afghanistan ?

I had to do some training before I went out – security and what to do in the event of, god forbid, stepping on a mine and then within a few weeks I was flying into Kabul which was utterly extraordinary.  We don’t in our normal lives find some airport where there are bits of commercial airliners just lying by the runway plus military jets plus crop sprayers, the lot – wheels, cockpits. The control tower was just racked with bullet holes, I don’t know how they were bringing the planes in. So it was terribly exciting, very interesting but as a film-maker, all of that isn’t enough really, you have to find a story, something that’s going to get people to come and sit in an audience. Ultimately people go to the cinema to be entertained, particularly in Britain where they think, ‘If I’m going to be educated, I’d rather watch it on TV.’ I didn’t know what that story would be, I thought I would be doing a film about a man but ultimately, this little kid on my very first day in Bamiyan found me.

What first led you to Mir and his family ?

Well on my very first day, I’d gone down to see the Buddhas which were in ruins and there were three guys there, still sweeping up the rubble and putting it in wheelbarrows, big shovels and I thought ‘here we go,’ and so I started filming, wondering what the reaction would be. They just started mucking about, one of them jumped into the wheelbarrow and started dancing. Then on the very same day, I noticed this group of 5 boys who’d come down to see who I was – for them I was entertainment, a distraction, and one them just stares down the lens and it was a great image which ultimately ended up at the beginning of the film. So I asked my Afghan colleague, who played an absolutely crucial role as I don’t speak the language, ‘Lets go and meet this family,’ and that’s how it all started about a decade ago.

How did the family initially respond to you ?

Initially they thought I was an aid worker. Like so many Islamic people, Afghans are very hospitable by nature and by culture but they also thought I would be there to help them. I was actually filming 12 families to start with and I narrowed it down quite quickly but it amazed me because there’s this bit in the film where I’m interviewing his (Mir’s) dad and I said ‘can you look into the camera ?’ and he talks to the camera like he’s talking to his best friend. He’s never been filmed before and I remember thinking ‘this is unbelievable to do it so naturally and be very funny.’ There’s this bit in the film where he’s just giggling away about Mir and again, the images of Afghanistan are of war, devastation, destruction, brutality and here’s this lovely old man giggling away talking about his misbehaving son. Obviously there were different issues with the mother and daughter and it took time and patience to build up their trust, they didn’t mind talking to the camera they were just worried what other people would think.

When I kept coming back they started getting confused because they thought ‘aid workers don’t come back every day.’ We explained to them what we were doing and built up a trust to the extent that what people are telling me is that even those that have lived in Afghanistan for ten years, have never seen inside an Afghan family like this. It’s unique and that’s fantastic for us because ultimately we’re trying to get under the skin a little bit, to see who Afghan people really are. Whether it’s the kind of people joining the Taliban or the kind of people being killed by errant missiles or running for political power or whatever because ultimately there’s a number of things you discover.

Firstly, they’re just like you and me and the fact that people just like you and me are eating grass in this day and age, is shocking. Secondly, to really get an understanding of Afghanistan, you have to understand that this is an extremely poor country and they are dependent on daily, arduous tasks to get drinkable water and bread, things you and I just don’t think about. We get up, have breakfast, go to work but for them, getting water, getting bread, is a daily chore. Now throughout this film, I have this little kid who grows up into a teenager, who is just consistently funny, entertaining, hard-working, determined…I was very lucky.

How hard was it to condense all that footage into just 90 minutes ?

It was very hard as the cinema-going audience take no prisoners ! They don’t care about me being delayed with all my gear at Dubai airport or the 4×4 breaking down in the desert with everyone looking at each other like, ‘what are we going to do now ?’ An audience is just like, ok entertain me !  So with a kid growing up you have the visual narrative of him physically changing, but every year when we returned to the village, the story has to move on and a lot of that is in the detail, the nuances.

But editing was very hard because you’re trying to intertwine what’s going on in the wider world, which we largely did with radio and television reports, and things don’t happen fast in that part of the world. When your daily work is ploughing fields or finding something flammable so you can boil your water and make it safe, the story’s a little slow. Keeping the action moving is all about the editing, the music, the appropriate use of interviews. The editing was an absolute challenge and recently we were nominated for a few awards (5 awards in one film festival) and the one which we won was editing and if I had to win one prize then that would be it. I think that it’s a masterpiece in that respect because you’re trying to keep this story driving forwards but you mustn’t get lost in the story, you’re constantly trying to make sure that people know where they are, who’s who, what’s happening in the outside world.

I heard you invested a lot of your own money into this film. How difficult was it to find funding for something like this ?

I don’t think it will recoup commercially. These types of films are in short, impossible. I am grateful for the investments Channel 4 made but it was under 15% of the budget and the question is, where do you find the other 85% ?  Anyone can go out and buy a camera and submit that idea about ‘My father the shipbuilder’ or whatever it is, broadcast it and even edit it from their laptop so I as a film-maker have to try and do things which the vast majority of people can’t,  something that is highly crafted or else an area which other people just don’t work in. For example no one else does my ‘Great Composer’ films, they’re three-year multi-faceted projects. It makes things extremely competitive and that competition also drives prices which broadcasters will pay downwards so a film like this is virtually impossible to make, it’s utterly exhausting and as a result I think this type of film-making is under threat.

You’ve mentioned how the film ties in Mir’s story with the events going on in the wider world. What points does it look to make about the current situation in Afghanistan itself ?

We as a planet have spent, in terms of military intervention over the last decade, 700 billion dollars in Afghanistan resulting in thousands of people being killed including of course 300 British service people and what the film seeks to do is say, ‘Look, you have to be interested in Afghanistan. How can you be alive and not show an interest in Afghanistan right now ?  And this film will educate you. It will tell you an awful lot about who the Afghans are. Now I see a lot of people who talk about Afghanistan who haven’t a clue, never been there, probably haven’t even talked to an Afghan but they want to use Afghanistan to further a political point, whether it be pro-military, anti-military, whatever it is.

People can have their different points of view, but be informed and understand what the situation is and clearly, the military intervention has definitely provided a period of peace for most of the country that has allowed the possibility of development but unfortunately, many many opportunities have been wasted, much money has not been used properly and many people have died unnecessarily and so now that the troops are planning to leave in the next 2,3 years, it is shocking that you still face the possibility of civil war, despite everything. And what the film is saying is look, next time the United States refuses to sign a landmine treaty, bear in mind that the type of kid that pick up those bright, yellow objects glistening in the stream, that’s Mir. And when that mine goes off and throws their legs into the next field, that’s Mir. And you read about collateral damage because someone in Qatar or back in the United States has unleashed a missile from a drone into a homestead, thinking that someone from the Taliban’s there and it says in the paper that eight villagers were killed, that’s Mir.

So before you make the decisions about how to progress in a country like Afghanistan, understand who the Afghans are.
What would you like people to take away from this film ?

What people are telling me as they leave the cinema is that they have had a thoroughly enjoyable 90 minutes. They don’t feel they’ve been lectured, they don’t come out feeling miserable. The village boys in the United States said that it makes you laugh and breaks your heart. First and foremost this is a funny, moving and beautiful film. Secondary, you come away will a real sense of Afghans as human beings just like us. They’re no different, their jokes, their desires, their needs and most people have a very shallow understanding of Afghanistan and Afghans and if you’re going to watch one film about Afghanistan then this is the one to watch. Frankly I don’t understand why anyone couldn’t want to know a little bit about Afghanistan because we’re all spending our money there and morally you should be interested as if you’re going to form an opinion about whether what we’re doing there is right or wrong, you have to understand who we’re trying to help and have we helped them.

 

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