“As America’s longest war raged on in Afghanistan, a film was made between 2005 and 2021 but this is not a war movie.”
I’ve seen many documentaries, but none like One Bullet. Carol Dysinger has chronicled her journey to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2021. She is the subject but also not the subject. She ends up getting caught up in her own film whether she wants to or not. That’s only part of this compelling movie spoken in Dari and English with subtitles.
The filmmaker was initially embedded with US troops in Afghanistan in 2005 when a stray bullet fired by an American soldier traveling with a convoy strikes a boy named Fahim in the back, paralyzing him. She followed lead investigator Col Bob Elliot as he toured around trying to figure out what happened and who was responsible for this outrage against justice. Little did she realize at that time she would be returning to this country and seeing the boy’s family for years to come.
Filmmaker Dysinger starts out wanting to make a film about the American war in Afghanistan and ends up making something completely different. Her journeys back and forth from her life as a teacher to this country on the edge of war were necessary but not fun for her. She ended up talking to the mother, Bibi, and brothers, Nadir and Faraday. She got another side of the story about the boy and how these people think about her and Americans generally speaking.
Documentaries can often turn into whatever they want. The filmmaker films their subjects then cuts together footage with narration along with archival footage or reimagining into a film. That could be exactly what they had planned or something totally different altogether comes out of it. In this case finding out what happened with this boy took second place over how his family dealt with it which leads us into their thoughts on what most Muslims call infidels.
Dysinger was welcomed into this woman’s house on many occasions. She was fed and treated like part of this woman’s family. Fahim was the youngest of five brothers, he had six sisters and in total his mother Bibi had fifty-three grandchildren through all her children’s marriages. She is a very hospitable person. That is why Dysinger continued to return until she finished her film.
One Bullet is a character study of a tragedy that befalls a promising young boy and becomes a story about how his family reacts to that tragedy. They are looking for someone to blame but there are no answers given. The filmmaker Dysinger feels bad about what happens and tries to comfort the boy’s family while at the same time trying to make a film about them. It comes together well with her narration. It’s just sad any way you look at this situation and what happened after she left the country.”
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