The story begins when a small crew, led by a well-born Pashtun woman named Vida Zaher Khadem, sets out for Afghanistan to make a documentary about the return to his native land of her brother, Baktash. Like Vida, Baki has become an American citizen, educated primarily in the United States. He has realized his ambition to become an American pilot, but he feels he has lost his roots. It is July 7, 2001.
The Taliban-controlled country is infested with mines, but bigger dangers loom. Vida soon discovers that Afghanistan’s male-dominated Muslim society categorically contests her directorial role. Her own uncle disapproves, insists she shroud herself, and refuses to introduce her as they travel from one rugged village to the next for sessions with far-flung members of the family tribes.
On numerous occasions, she is forced to wait in the car, or left with the women, while the men film without her. She is also at risk of arrest each time she flaunts the Taliban. After six weeks of such physical and psychological punishment, she takes her crew back to the United States, exhausted, discouraged, and glad to be safe in the 21st Century.
Four weeks later, the Twin Towers are destroyed by Middle East terrorists based in Afghanistan. Knowing that they will be questioned by the FBI, the group decides to dupe its footage to save it from being confiscated. They then call the FBI themselves, as they recognize is their patriotic duty, and in the coming weeks use their footage (now marked “Top Secret”) for a tutorial on Afghanistan’s political and social structures.
Less than a month after 9/11 Vida’s mentor and cinematographer in Afghanistan, Jawed Wassel, is brutally murdered while in the process of finishing his own film, “FireDancer.” Though devastated by Jawed’s slaughter, Vida sets aside “Return to Afghanistan” whose producer, John G. Roche, agrees to become producer of Jawed’s film as well. They organize “FireDancer’s” World Premiere in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium, the site of many Taliban hangings and beheadings. A huge success in Afghanistan, “Firedancer” becomes the country’s first ever submission to the Academy Awards.
All of these events are captured in Return To Afghanistan, a film whose events Vida lives in real time as Al Qaeda and Afghanistan become household words across America. Vida and Baki, searching for their native roots, are suddenly in roles on the world stage.
Through it all, Vida must reconcile the tension of her dual nature and circumstances – an Afghan woman in rebellion against the patriarchal oppression of her freedom of expression. And, at the same time, a daughter trying to be dutiful and niece who doesn’t want to offend sensibilities she abhors.
Return To Afghanistan begins as a story about Baktash Zaher, and winds up as a story about its filmmaker, Vida Zaher, a woman who finds herself on the front lines of the confrontation between West and East. As America wrestles with its desire to bring democracy to Afghanistan and the rest of the Muslim world, international audiences will find this up-to-the-minute account absolutely fascinating. Vida Zaher’s story is a gripping study of the Eastern forces of “destiny” in a struggle with one now Western woman’s determination to be “her own person”.