My Childhood, My Country – 20 Years In Afghanistan: Review

29th August 2021

Life in Afghanistan has become increasingly difficult over the past twenty years. Ever since the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the US and the UK came together to put a stop on terror and at first their efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan were successful. However, as in recent weeks, Afghanistan has been the biggest cause for concern as President Biden announced that American and British troops would be out of Afghanistan by September 11^th of this year.

My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan is a documentary directed by Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi that focuses on a boy called Mir and tracks his life from when he was only seven years old to just months before the documentary’s release.

Mir grew up as any other child did at the turn of the century in Afghanistan, he loved playing and having fun with his friends and family and as he grew up, he started to become interested in girls and the newest technologies. Then as he grew older, he put away childish things, got married and started to raise a family.

Mir also became fascinated with filmmaking (probably due to the documentary makers themselves), so Mir started work as a camera man and soon was on the front line documenting the terrorist attacks from orchestrated by the Taliban on his own country.

Never has a documentary been so poignant and heart-breaking as this. What probably started out as an ambitious documentary charting the life of a young boy living in Afghanistan and how foreign forces helped to rebuild the country, has turned into something so tragic and it’s reflected in Mir’s story.

Starting out by showing his life and having all of the same troubles as any other young man, over the years My Childhood, My Country shows the effects that the Taliban have had not only on the country as a whole, but on the morale of its population.

Mir has suffered personal tragedy and loss through the attacks on his country and all he wants is freedom. There won’t be any answers as to why foreign troops were pulled from Afghanistan so quickly and so completely, but anybody who watches My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan will see how big of a mistake has been made.

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