Kabul, Between Prayers, directed by Aboozar Amini, stands out not for bombast but for the quiet, piercing intimacy of its gaze.
The documentary, the second instalment in Aboozar’s planned Kabul trilogy following his acclaimed debut Kabul, City in the Wind (2018), reflects the director’s meticulous approach and the political realities that made his physical presence in Afghanistan impossible, resulting in a project that has taken years to complete.
Now based in the Netherlands, Aboozar collaborated remotely with cinematographer Ali Agha Oktay Khan to bring the film to life — a feat of patience and persistence that echoes the lives of its subjects.
The subjects of the film, however, are not what one might expect from a Hazara-born filmmaker whose community has been brutally repressed under Taliban rule.
Rather than profiling victims of violence or focusing on acts of resistance, Aboozar turns his lens on 23-year-old Samim, a part-time Taliban fighter and farmer, and his younger brother Rafi, aged 14.
It is a daring choice — one that inevitably courts discomfort. Samim openly declares that he longs to spread Sharia law across the world, and viewers first see him loading a rifle on his prayer mat — an image that encapsulates the entanglement of faith, violence, and aspiration that defines his worldview.
Yet, rather than caricaturing him as an unredeemable extremist, Aboozar insists on watching him as a full human being: a young man who yearns for coolness, who practices English phrases in his downtime, and who speaks of the importance of kindness even as he dreams of martyrdom.
Living between prayers
Meanwhile, Rafi embodies adolescence on the cusp of peril. Sweet-natured, playful, and still prone to childish games with his younger brother Elias, he nonetheless idolises Samim and is immersed in an environment where unquestioned obedience is the norm.
When prompted to recite his favourite verse of the Quran, he does so flawlessly, only to admit that he does not understand its meaning — he chose it because "it has a nice rhyme to it."
This revelation is heartbreaking, emblematic of how surface-level devotion and rote learning can take root long before comprehension arrives.
In this way, the film exposes the banal mechanisms of radicalisation, not through lectures but through the minutiae of family life.
Aboozar’s great strength lies in patience. Rather than rushing through staged moments, he allows silences and hesitations to linger.
Samim and Rafi live “between prayers,” caught between youthful dreams and ideological demands, between the intimacy of family and the abstraction of dogma, between fleeting tenderness and the looming spectre of violence.
Visually, the film avoids spectacle. Ali’s cinematography is restrained, attentive rather than assertive, following the brothers as they work, pray, play, and converse.
The decision to embrace observation over dramatisation pays off, grounding the film in the texture of daily life. Yet, Aboozar is unafraid to break from this observational mode when necessary: occasional direct-to-camera moments pierce the veneer of routine, revealing deeper currents of thought.
These moments are less confrontational than quietly revealing, as when Rafi explains his Quranic recitation, or when Samim slips between bravado and self-contradiction.
A glimpse of distorted humanity
The editing, by Neel Cockx, Cătălin Cristuțiu, and Annelotte Medema, deserves particular praise. It weaves disparate strands of the brothers’ lives into a coherent portrait, juxtaposing scenes of domesticity with reminders of a hostile wider world.
Meanwhile, sound design by Ensieh Leyla Maleki adds another layer, overlaying whispered prayers onto images or muting audio to sharpen our attention. The effect is one of melancholy rather than sensationalism, reinforcing the film’s refusal to demonise, even as it refuses to excuse.
What emerges is a paradoxical portrait: a Taliban fighter who speaks of kindness, a teenager who recites sacred verses without understanding them, and a family caught between affection and indoctrination. These contradictions are never resolved — nor could they be — but Aboozar’s refusal to simplify them is, in itself, an ethical stance.
In his director’s statement, he makes clear that his intent is not to call for renewed foreign intervention in Afghanistan, nor to exploit the suffering of his homeland for exotic effect. Instead, he offers a mirror: a glimpse of humanity, even when it is distorted, uncomfortable, or monstrous.
In this regard, Kabul, Between Prayers stands apart from much of the Western media coverage of Afghanistan, which often traffics in clichés of endless war, faceless militants, or passive victims.
By insisting on looking at Samim and Rafi as individuals — flawed, contradictory, and painfully human — Aboozar challenges viewers to consider what it means to live under the shadow of ideology without reducing his subjects to mere symbols.
The result is not an easy watch. Nor should it be. Aboozar has given us a film that dwells in complexity, asking us to sit with discomfort rather than chase clarity.
Davide Abbatescianni is an Italian Film Critic and Journalist based in Rome
Follow him on X: @dabbatescianni