ABSTRACT
Early on in my career, I made the decision to create fictions with actors who were paid to deliver the words that I wrote.
Michelle Citron
The London International Film Festival was home to a most unlikely event in November 2004: the screening of two films about Afghanistan made by two sisters. Internationally acclaimed Iranian film-maker Samira Makhmalbaf (Blackboards, 2000 and The Apple, 1998), screened her third full-length feature Panj é asr (At Five in the Afternoon, 2003). Her younger sister Hana1 screened her debut feature documentary, Lezate Divanegi (Joy of Madness, Iran, 2003). Not yet fourteen when she made the film, Hana thus broke the record, established by her elder sister, who at seventeen had previously been the youngest filmmaker to have a film screened at Cannes.
