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Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. The program that explores

the creative process of some of the world's greatest artists.

Twice Taliban tried to kill me and once they came to me they asked me where is

Mousen Mahmoud Baf and I was shocked but I guide them somewhere else and I ran away.

This is Mousen Mahmoud Baf, one of Iran's most important directors, writer, activist, producer.

Now age 66, his 20 plus films of one over 50 awards. Moral, challenging films that ultimately

made him a target of the ruling government of his country. He's lived in exile since 2009.

It is the life which I had always in danger. When we were under shadow of Iranian dictator,

Iranian King was modern but dictator. Later we had not modern and dictator. You know,

still we are living in the shadow of dictatorship. What you're about to hear is an interview I

recorded with Mousen Mahmoud Baf in the summer of 2022 about his masterpiece Candahar which was

released months before the terrorist attacks in America on 9-11. It's a film that has relevant

today as it's ever been. Mousen had already made a film about an Afghan refugee living in Iran

called the cyclist. Canadian journalist Nella Fapazira, who had grown up in Afghanistan, she saw

the cyclist and flew to Tehran to talk to the director and asked him to film her as she went

back to the country of her birth to visit a friend, a woman traumatized by life under the Taliban.

Mahmoud Baf, who often likes to work with non-professional actors, asked her to play a

version of herself in the film. So we follow Nella for traveling through the Afghan desert towards

the city of Candahar on the eve of an eclipse, meeting villages, doctors, charity workers,

...