In Kabul, escape at all costs, on Arte

The blow dealt to America is brutal in this month of August 2021. Twenty years after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the intervention of the first world power in Afghanistan ends in humiliating scenes of chaos at Kabul airport. Images of clusters of Afghans clinging to the fuselage of a US Air Force C-17 plane have been seen around the world. « We did not measure the extent of this evacuation, it was a humanitarian disaster», drops a marine officer in the shock documentary Flee Kabulby Jamie Roberts.

Scary behind closed doors

Through hundreds of scenes taken on the spot, often filmed by simple mobile phones, all interspersed with interviews with soldiers without jargon, the film immerses the viewer in a harrowing camera around the airport of the capital , where more than 100,000 Afghans were evacuated in the eighteen days following the return of the Taliban. The tension mounts as the minutes go by: the sly departure of the regime’s pro-Western dignitaries, the interminable and deadly wait of hundreds of thousands of Kabulians huddled against the tarmac doors, these trampled children, these thirsty old men, these women who give birth in the line, the bloody attack…

All the merit of the film is to have met the gaze of yesterday’s enemies, forced to dialogue and cohabit in order to try to curb this human tide which invades the airport. There are Americans overwhelmed by events who recognize that their last mission in Afghanistan is ending in chaos and total unpreparedness. » A tragedy « , breathes a soldier in tears. « Better not to think » recognize another. Opposite, there is the pride of the Taliban to have defeated the first army in the world, but also their incomprehension in front of these immense crowds which seek to flee them at all costs. A year after the fall of Kabul, more and more Afghans dream of foreign countries.