CANDID: “Much of the documentary is not scripted, but improvised,” says Yosef Baraki. (RIGHT): BIG MOMENT: The protagonist, Farzana is not aware she is being filmed as she prepares for a scene. Photos by Yosef Baraki

By Umer Nangiana

From the moment she wakes up in her humble dwelling to start out a long day, the camera stays focused on her. Throughout, as she cooks, sews, washes and sells knick-knacks on the war-torn streets of Kabul to feed her neglectful father and senile grandfather, she remains in the tight frame.      
But as she gets in contact with the society at large, the frame widens. Through the personal story of 12-year-old Mina, walking the streets of war-torn Kabul, the 26-year-old Canadian-Afghan writer and director Yosef Baraki has managed to depict multiple facets of life in post-war Kabul in extraordinary detail.
Mina Walking, Yosef’s first quasi-documentary film, follows this impulsive girl, who wanders Kabul’s streets selling cheap trinkets to feed her Alzheimer stricken grandfather and her heroin addicted father; secretly attends school, a decision that sets in motion a chain of events that change her life forever.
On a broader canvas, the film sheds light on the problems of a segment of poverty stricken Afghan youth, who after decades of war and conflict are compelled to harbour social and financial responsibilities right from their childhood.   
The film won Yosef the Golden Frame Award for Best Director at this year’s All Lights India International Film Festival besides winning multiple awards at different festivals. The film was screened twice at the recently-concluded Ajyal Film Festival in Doha this year. Yosef, here to personally introduce his film to the Ajyal audience, tells Community that the making of the film in a war-hit country in itself was an experience.
In fact, it came out as a reaction to rejection of an earlier 110-page long script about a film by Afghan ministry of culture. Coming out of his year-long research and interactions with people in Afghanistan soon after completing his graduation in Film Production and Philosophy at Toronto’s York University and Humber College, the first screenplay was not compelling enough, Yosef acknowledges.
“Though centred on a girl, it was a completely different story. I didn’t feel great about the story and then I submitted it to Afghan ministry of culture for approval and thankfully, it was rejected because I was not sold on it completely myself,” says Yosef.
“I was ready to go and make this film, but it was rejected. That led to a sort of angry reaction to that dismissal, and the result of that angry reaction was Mina Walking,” he adds, before elaborating how the film came about.
“I sat down and threw away all my research. All I had with me were emotions and the information that was in my head. I wrote a story in 15 minutes. A month later I was shooting in Kabul. We filmed the entire movie in 19 days with non-professional actors,” the director reveals.
Every day, he says, he would decide what to shoot based on a rough outline of the story that he had with him in those 15 minutes. Much of the documentary is not scripted, but improvised.
Elaborating how he found the inspiration for it, Yosef says he wanted to explore his Afghan culture that he had always experienced from the periphery in his Canadian home. Primarily, the idea of this documentary was to know the culture and better explore it through details.
“I am someone, who is almost obsessed with details. I love watching normal things take place, just as a process of things happening, I feel this is how I have learned a lot about cultures and traditions, by just observing,” says the young filmmaker.
“So I told myself that I was perhaps, going to learn about my culture and perhaps, show other people this culture by creating a story that will focus on details,” he explains.
The street children of Afghanistan became the focus of the story because they were Yosef’s first point of interaction and he spent a lot of time with them. He says they are one of the most easily accessible people in Afghanistan.
The street children you see in the film selling things on the street, he says, are actual street children. Particularly following a group of four children, including two girls, Yosef observed their routine and noticed that despite being younger and physically weak, the girls were making more money than the boys. They were somehow outsmarting the men.
The process was interesting for him. It showed how a group of women in the society are made to be so aggressive and passionate about this type of work because they do not have to just compete with other women but much stronger and dominant men, in order to support their families.
And they are on the street for a reason. Instead of being in schools, they are on streets because they have to support their parents who are wounded in war, or because they were orphaned. It was through his initial interaction with these street children that the idea of a story about a girl, Mina, emerged.
“At the end of the day, after I spent time with them, I would ask myself what happens to this girl when she is home. Does she have a family? Who does she support? Does someone support her? Does someone love her? Who do these people have in their lives that require these girls to be so aggressive and so smart on the street to be able to make money” says the film director.
“I believe that I wanted to show the details of a small section of this kind of life. Being on the street and being outspoken instead of shy and passive, the street children gave me the opportunity to follow them into all avenues in Kabul,” says Yosef, who wrote, directed, shot, cinematographed and edited the film himself.
A recurring theme in the seven days of Mina’s life in the documentary is a reference to the 2014 Afghan elections. Yosef filmed it during the election month and being in Kabul and being around young people, it was difficult to ignore the atmosphere of anticipation and hope.
Touched by this atmospheric change, he makes the protagonist of his work visit a polling station with her teacher.
“We really wanted to create a scene that reflected this climate of hope where despite everything that was happening to Mina she could get away from that for one day and could go and have a look at a different life,” says Yosef, adding that through her teacher she could see a different life; a life where change could potentially happen.
Mina Walking was selected to have its world premiere at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival where it was screened for 4,000 people over a period of four days. It was nominated for a Crystal Bear, Best First Feature Award, and the Amnesty Film Prize.