JAMES LONGLEY
James Longley was born in Eugene, Oregon in 1972. He studied Film and Russian at the Wesleyan University and VGIK in Moscow. His student short documentary, "Portrait of boy with dog" (co-directed with Robin Hessman), won a Student Academy Award. His first feature documentary film, "Gaza Strip", explores the second Palestinian upris­ing. His celebrated documentaries "Iraq in Fragments" (nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary Feature in 2007, winner of jury prizes for Best Documentary Directing, Cinematography, and Editing at the Sundance Film Festival) and "Sari's Mother" (nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary Short Subject in 2008) showing life in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion. Longley is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Director's statement
"Much of our mental image of Afghanistan is related to war. It’s easy to feel distanced from the normal lives of Afghans, we see so little of them. If we are asked to picture ordinary life in Kabul, our imaginations usually fail. Most of us don’t have those memories stored away. Many people find the very idea of traveling to a place like Afghanistan terrifying. What happens to our thinking about the people of a place we only ever see in conflict, from behind the barrel of a gun?
Here, I am painting in some of that mental canvas with close-up memories of Afghan civilians. Through the safe and approachable world of a neighborhood school, the film encourages audiences to enter Afghanistan in their mind’s eye. Giving viewers the opportunity to think about Afghanistan from an interior, civilian perspective is the essential motivating idea behind the movie and how it was made".