Hollywoodgate: a 'raw and uncompromising' documentary

Shortly after US forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban occupied Hollywood Gate, a complex in Kabul that is said to have been a CIA base, said Linda Marric in The Sun. This "fly-on- the-wall documentary", made by the Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash'at, is about the Taliban's first year in power; it follows a group of fighters led by Mawlawi Mansour, a commander whose father was killed in a US strike, as they sort through the military equipment the Americans left behind.

The film focuses on the men's daily lives, and offers a "raw and uncompromising" insight into Afghanistan's new ruling class, who allow Nash'at to film them "despite their obvious mistrust". They seem to have hoped that the film would help them to spread their ideology around the world. Instead, the "biggest takeaway" from the documentary is just how "listless and deflated" the fighters seem. "With foreign forces gone, their dreams of martyrdom have gone up in smoke, and all they seem to be left with are pointless spoils of war and a country hugely in need of infrastructure."

"A troubling but completely necessary watch", "Hollywoodgate" exposes "the disturbing results of the power vacuum created by US military intervention in Afghanistan", said Christina Newland in The i Paper. That Nash'at put himself in such obvious "personal danger to create it makes the doc all the more impressive".

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He is transparent about the fact that his access was strictly restricted, said Ben Kenigsberg in The New York Times. No women appear, for instance, apart from beggars; and we mainly just watch Mansour and one of his lieutenants presenting themselves with "varying degrees of self-consciousness". These glaring holes mean that "it could only ever feel incomplete".