Screened as part of NZIFF 2007

Enemies of Happiness 2006

Vores lykkes fjender

Directed by Eva Mulvad, Anja Al-Erhayem

Tense, claustrophobic Danish doco counts down the ten days leading up to the 2005 Afghanistan election, focusing on brave, controversial female candidate Malalai Joya.

Denmark In English and Pashto with English subtitles
58 minutes Beta-SP

Photography

Zillah Bowes

Editor

Adam Nielsen

Music

Thomas Knak
,
Jesper Skaaning
,
Anders Remmer

With

Malalai Joya

Festivals

Sundance 2007

Awards

Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2007

Elsewhere

This tense, claustrophobic documentary counts down the ten days leading up to the 2005 Afghanistan election. Its focus is Malalai Joya, a female candidate who had been banished from the Loya Jirga (Great Council) some years earlier for speaking out against the warlords who were covertly running – and ruining – her country. Western media have dubbed Joya “the most famous woman in Afghanistan”, but celebrity is a decidedly mixed blessing, leading to multiple assassination attempts and requiring a round-the-clock armed guard. Having inspired countless Afghani women to stand up for their rights, Joya now finds herself having to hide beneath the hated burka for her own safety. A magnet to desperate women, the film traces her attempts to help a teenaged girl who is being relentlessly pursued by a man old enough to be her grandfather. It provides a hair-raising insight into a world of alien gender relationships, in which the mere suggestion that husbands could look after their children for a couple of hours while their wives go to vote is met with howls of outrage. — Andrew Langridge