Nothinwood 

A hundred kilometres or so away from Kabul, Salim Shaheen, the most popular and prolific actor-film-maker-producer in all of Afghanistan, came to show a few of his 110 films and make the 111th at the same time. This trip into which he enrolled his group of actors, each more eccentric and out of control than the other, is the opportunity to get to know this lover of cinema, who without respite has been making Z-series films in a war-torn country for more than thirty years.

“I like the idea of Shaheen constantly making films, as a basic need, with the energy of a convict, and an unshaken belief in what he is doing. Beyond the quality of his films, the Afghans like his cinema because it gives them a face and a voice that exist nowhere else. He represents them. In Shaheen’s films, ordinary people are heroes. The poor succeed in overcoming the rich. The weak come out as winners in the end. The powerful are punished ... His films give a face and substance to people who have none. That is what moves me in his work.” Sonia Kronlund