Dusty Night

In a few splendid, pitch-dark shots pierced only by car headlights, this short film made in Kabul by Ali Hazara for the Atelier Varan documentary project gives us a glimpse of a world that, viewed from here, has been engulfed under the media’s images of war. Arduously finding their way by the light of a shop or a petrol pump, the capital’s night sweepers perform a very curious job. No sooner have they swept up the dust than it resettles a little further down the street, without missing the fruit displays of discontented grocers. “This bloody dust… there’s no end to it”. By superimposing the sweepers’ futile gestures with the voice-over of one of them, Hazara pin-points the cycle of widespread corruption that is at the root of their absurd task.