'Devastating': Wendy Chamberlain reviews 'The List'

Kabul, August 2021: Desperate Afghans standing in an open sewer beg for entry into the airport | Images courtesy of: Hana and Maysam Makhmalbaf

Wendy Chamberlain MP

@wendychambLD

When the US determined to leave Afghanistan in August 2021, the country was thrown into chaos as the Taliban rapidly advanced towards Kabul. Although Parliament was recalled, I remember a feeling of impotence watching British and other service personnel facilitate what evacuations they could, as well as receiving desperate pleas via email from those attempting to leave.

Now The List, directed by Hana Makhmalbaf, uses video footage, photographs and audio from that time to bring the horror of those final days to life with devastating effect.

Hana’s father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is a leading light of the new wave of Iranian cinema, and his family have been living in exile in London for a number of years, with creative colleagues and connections across the world. That August, the family quickly identified that – just like the Afghan military that had supported the western forces – artists, filmmakers, journalists and others would be at extreme risk once the Taliban took over. The film captures the efforts made by both them and volunteers globally to evacuate those friends and colleagues.

Although the Makhmalbafs themselves feature prominently in phone and camera footage as they compile the list of 800 creatives they will seek to extract, the film chooses not to directly identify particular people or individuals, which adds to its power.

Early on, we see large numbers of Afghans attempting to crowd military planes on the tarmac, with one individual taking phone footage from the undercarriage of a plane as he and others desperately cling on. Later a flight takes off, and as the aircraft disappears into the sky, small dark spots are captured falling from it. Those same men, having lost conscious at altitude, are now falling hopelessly to their deaths.

The Makhmalbafs are themselves in tears as the days take their toll and the window of opportunity closes

As the Makhmalbafs make calls to the various embassies, and diplomatic contacts they have, we see the administration of life-saving help first-hand: WhatsApp communications with pictures of individuals and their families so French military personnel can identify them for access to the airport, lists of names with notes, highlighter marks, and categories. Individual codenames are used to prevent interception and identification for those most at risk.

And we see the emotion: the increasingly desperate phone calls with those outside the airport waiting in an open sewer to be identified and brought forward, the setting-off of tear gas and the firing of weapons to disperse the crowds, which causes only panic, injury and death. Pleading parents, whose small children are suffering from heat stroke, making the difficult decision to return home to hide rather than try and remain to be saved. The Makhmalbafs are themselves in tears as the days take their toll and the window of opportunity closes.

Of the 800 people on the list, 279 manage to escape Afghanistan, but hundreds are left behind. Although some have since been rescued, most are still in hiding to this day.

This action is juxtaposed against footage of Hana’s young son visiting his grandfather Mohsen’s apartment where the operation is being coordinated, singing songs with his family, playing, and at one point repotting a plant so that it can grow. When set against the footage from the airport, where an individual is being forced back down into the sewer by soldiers while children scream and cry to the soundtrack of constant gunfire, such normal activities are particularly impactful on the viewer.

I came away from the screening thinking about the film Schindler’s List, where Ben Kingsley’s character Itzhak Stern says to Oskar Schindler: “The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.” The list here has the same meaning and importance. I wish the Makhmalbafs and their supporters, such as Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick Productions, every success in ensuring the eventual safe extraction of all 800 artists on the list.

Wendy Chamberlain is Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife and chair of the Afghan Women and Girls APPG

The List
Directed by: Hana Makhmalbaf
Producer: Maysam Makhmalbaf
Broadcaster: TBC

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