Elegy of the Enemy is a short documentary film shot by the authors during a four-week-long journey throughout Afghanistan in August 2022. On that occasion, they witnessed the celebrations for the first year of the Taliban’s return to power that followed the departure of the US army after twenty years of war. On that specific and almost unique occasion of celebrations, both the veterans and the youngest among the Talibans were unexpectedly open and comfortable speaking and being filmed.
The film opens with a statement from Russian chemist, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Ilya Prigogine, chosen as a symbol of Western critical thought, presenting an ever-evolving concept of the world, essentially the opposite position of the one that will unfold throughout the rest of the film.
Built on a non-narrative editing pattern of raw footage captured on location, the composition of the film moves from the textures of the multi-coloured rocks of the country’s mountains to the dark-pale sands of its deserts, from the ruins of its ancient past to the landscapes of cities such as Kabul, Kandahar and Gardez.
Composed in a lyrical-elegiac tone, driven by shades of a sad wonder and constant tension, the film is guided by the voices of nine former Mujahid warriors, individually portrayed and introduced in a dedicated sequence. A selection of war accounts, theological assumptions, and ethical considerations streams through their own words, merging in a monody for alternating voices.
The result is a compendium of the Talibans’ vision of themselves and the world in its most intimate and recent version, essentially based on the assumption of their neverchanging nature.