Hollywoodgate (2024)
Director: Ibrahim Nash’at Run Time: 92 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2024
Starring: Ibrahim Nash’at, Shane Boris, Talal Derki
Country: Germany, United States
Language: Dari, Pashto, English
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Venice Film Festival.
The day after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban immediately move to occupy the Hollywood Gate complex, claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul. The Taliban find what the most technologically advanced military in history left behind: aircrafts, weapons, and valuable military equipment. Baffled by the technology, Malawi Mansour, the newly assigned Air Force commander, orders his soldiers to inventory and repair everything they can. Mukhtar, motivated to one day conquer the world, arrives at Hollywood Gate aiming to build a high-ranking military career.
While Malawi Mansour and Mukhtar are focused on maximizing their own personal objectives, their comrades continue to repair the weapons left behind at Hollywood Gate. AK-47s that were once used by the US and NATO are now in the hands of the Taliban; helicopters and fighter jets that were thought to be destroyed now lethally bomb the opposition, creating untold collateral damage in the process; and the use of international documentarians for the purposes of propaganda is now underway.
“an overture to an international crisis, a warning as much as a documentary.”
—Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert
Over the course of one year, the film exposes the transformation of a fundamentalist militia into a military regime.
About the filmmaker:
Ibrahim Nash’at is an Egyptian documentary filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany. His career in journalism spans various formats, working with several international channels and online platforms such as Deutsche Welle, Business Insider, and more. He holds a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Met Film School, and he co-edited Academy Award-nominated director Talal Derki’s latest film, Under the Sky of Damascus (2023), which premiered at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival and won the Golden Alexander at the 25th Thessaloniki Doc Festival. Nash’at has directed three short films, A Moment With the Wind (2018), Home Away From Home (2019), and Berlin’s Diversity (2021). Hollywoodgate (2024) is his debut feature film.
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