The New York Times
03/08/2010
By Jeannette Catsoulis
[Printer Friendly Version]

Ajmal Naqshbandi

En route to a 2007 interview with a Taliban warlord in Afghanistan, the Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo and his 24-year-old interpreter, Ajmal Naqshbandi, were kidnapped. Mr. Mastrogiacomo was released (in a complicated deal that included the release of five Taliban prisoners and a new road said to have been paid for by the Italian government), but his companion was detained and eventually murdered.

Image from a video broadcast by Italian RAI state television TG1 newscast Tuesday April 10, 2007, showing the instants before the purported execution in March 2007 by the Taliban of Afghan driver Sayed Agha, blindfolded at right on the ground, who had been kidnapped with Italian La Repubblica daily journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, second from left blindfolded, and freelance journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi, bottom left blindfolded. The Taliban said later that it had beheaded Naqshbandi. Mastrogiacomo was freed after a much-criticized prisoner swap with the Taliban.

As unsettling and complex as the country it traverses, Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, Ian Oldss stunning documentary, swings between events surrounding that murder and footage shot six months earlier, when Mr. Naqshbandi, an Afghan journalist, was assisting Christian Parenti of The Nation. With one timeline providing context for the other, the film illuminates not only the extreme dangers faced by journalists and their Afghan facilitators (or, fixers) but also the extreme stasis of a country choking on corruption and barbarism.

Gathering multiple media sources including repulsive Taliban-produced videos, their full horror barely concealed by an onscreen black box Fixer memorializes a soft-spoken, savvy young man whose motivations remain stubbornly vague. Behind the camera, Mr. Olds works with melancholic artistry, his lens bouncing across fields of cannabis and arid, rubble-strewn roads. Like his terrific 2006 documentary, Occupation: Dreamland (which followed a group of American soldiers stationed in Falluja, Iraq), Fixer is a deeply disorienting film propelled by a jagged anxiety that permeates every image and interview.

Cradled by a haunting soundtrack, Ajmal Naqshbandi lends a human face to a political tragedy so grand we may prefer to disengage. Mr. Olds would prefer that we not.

FIXER
The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi
Opens on Tuesday in Manhattan.
Directed and edited by Ian Olds; director of photography, Mr. Olds; music by Growing; produced by Mr. Olds and Nancy Roth. At the Maysles Cinema, 343 Malcolm X Boulevard, between 127th and 128th Streets, Harlem. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. This film is not rated.

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