At Five in the Afternoon
Filmfest 2006

AT FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON comes death’ claims a haunting snatch of poetry in this equally haunting picture. One of the first feature films to emerge from post-Taliban Afghanistan, it follows Noqreh as she struggles to redefine her role as a woman... With the harsh realities of life on the ground proving an obstacle to Noqreh’s ambitious dream of female empowerment (she plans to become the first woman president of the new republic), the film finds only a series of hesitant, incomplete images in which to place hope: a pair of battered high heels, a once outlawed game of hopscotch, a clandestine photograph. Jamie Russel, www.bbc.co.uk