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Jirga
Directed by	Benjamin Gilmour
Written by	Benjamin Gilmour
Produced by	John Maynard
Starring	Sam Smith
Cinematography	Benjamin Gilmour
Edited by	Nikki Stevens
Music by	AJ True
Production company	Felix Media Pty Ltd
Release date	27th September 2018
Running time	78 mins
Country	Australia
Language	English
Box office	$110,056

Jirga

Jirga is a 2018 Australian drama written and directed by Benjamin Gilmour and produced by John Maynard. It stars Sam Smith as a former Australian Soldier returning to Afghanistan to seek the forgiveness of the family of a man he killed while serving in the war. The film was shot under extreme circumstances, in dangerous locations and with assistance from local the local people of Afghanistan. Deemed too politically divisive to be produced in Pakistan the film moved production at the last minute to Afghanistan and shot in one of the most dangerous regions in the world Kandahar Province.

Gilmour sought to create a film in which line between truth and fiction is blurred. Gilmour stated he wishes to "make an audience feel like they're not quite sure if they're watching a documentary or a drama."

Plot

The Australian army sends a helicopter raid to a small village in Afghanistan in search of hidden Taliban soldiers. Men in the village seeking to protect their families exchange gunfire with the soldiers. During the raid a soldier named Mike shoots and kills an unarmed man who stepped into the doorway of his home. The man's wife and children pull him back into his house.

Three years later Mike returns to Afghanistan in search of the family in order to ask for forgiveness and with a large sum of money as recompense. He lands in Kabul where he comes in contact with a man who had previously arranged to transport him to the families village. This man now refuses telling Mike it is too dangerous and that he should go back to Australia. Mike then buys a guitar from a small local store

Mike asks a hotel owner to call a taxi driver to bring him to the village which is in Kandahar Province. The hotel owner refuses as the village is deep in Taliban territory. He says he can arrange for a driver to take him as far south as a lake but that is all. While at the lake Mike tries to convince the Taxi Driver to take him the rest of the way to Kandahar, offering him a lot of money. The Taxi Driver refuses and argues back with Mike. Neither man speaks the other's language and so the argument simply stops. That night Mike pulls out his guitar and plays a song. The Taxi Driver sings and Mike teaches him to sing the notes which correspond to the guitar strings.

Lake Band-e-Amir in Afghanistan. Photo by: Carl Montgomery

The next morning Mike offers the Taxi Driver even more money and begs him to drive to the village. The drive accepts and they begin the drive. They are stopped at a road block and the Taxi Driver tells Mike "Taliban, Taliban." Mike gets out of the car and scrambles down a nearby cliff to escape the men who shoot at him but do not follow down the cliff. Mike begins to walk towards the village but collapses from the heat and dehydration. Taliban soldiers find him unconscious in the dessert and take him captive, chaining him in a cave.

The Taliban men discuss whether to kill Mike but their leader Colonel Rafiq wants to interview him first. They speak through a translator, Amir Tailbani, and Mike explains why he is there. Rafiq tells him that giving the money would be disrespectful and asks "your people kill thousands of us. Why do you care about this one man?"

Rafiq takes Mike to a bombed building and tells him that his brother and his brothers entire family were killed by an American drone there. Rafiq agrees to bring Mike to the village. On the way to the village Amir Tailbani teaches Mike how to apologise to the family in Pashto by saying "I killed someone, please forgiveness."

When Mike reaches the village he explains that he is there because he killed one a man in the raid three years prior. He walks the villagers through the village explaining how his team carried out the raid and that they thought the men shooting at them were Taliban. The villagers take him to the family of the man he killed where he apologises in Pashto. The man's widow cries and his two sons stare at Mike furiously.

The village holds a Jirga, a meeting of elders to decide whether to punish or forgive Mike. The Jirga decide the son of the man who was killed deserves to decide Mike's fate. He steps through the crowd with a dagger, holds it to Mike's neck before sheathing it and deciding to forgive. The Jirga believe he has made the correct decision and one elder says "forgiveness is mightier and [more] honourable than taking revenge."

Cast

Sam Smith as Mike Wheeler

Muhammad Shah Majroh as Colonel Rafiq

Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad as Taxi Driver

Amir Shah Talash as Amir Tailbani

Basheer Safi as Sher Khan

Production

Conception

While Gilmour was shooting his previous two films "Son of a Lion," and "Paramedico," he spent a lot of time on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Looking at the Khyber Pass Gilmour said he felt drawn towards the country but was unable to make a film there at the time as it was under Taliban control. There he met with many refugees from Afghanistan and "found them to be the most engaging, generous, kind people." He found they were deeply connected to their culture, music and poetry and that he felt more comfortable in the company of Pashtun men than men of his own country. In 2013 on a trip to Afghanistan Gilmour decided he had to create a film there.

Gilmour also worked as a paramedic in NSW for 20 years. This work brought him into close contact with Veterans of the War in Afghanistan, who shared with him their stories of the war as well as the guilt they experienced as a result of their actions. Gilmour combined the experiences of these veterans and the Afghan refugees into the story of Jirga. He believed it was important to show people seemingly on opposite sides of the war, both suffering the same tragic consequences.

Gilmour wrote a draft screenplay in Australia, discussing it with friends he had who were Afghan refugees in Pakistan to make sure the story was as realistic as possible. The plan was always to take the draft screenplay on location and get local people to perfect the dialogue. "You can't sit 10 000 kms away from the country you're going to shoot in and write a script and put dialogue into the mouths of people who are speaking a language which is not your own," Gilmour said.

Filming

The original plan was to shoot the film in Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan. Gilmour says the production was "lured to Pakistan with promise of considerable finance from a businessman in Islamabad." According to Gilmour this was supposed to be an investment of "$100 000 U.S. dollars, which goes a long way in Pakistan." Gilmour and star Sam Smith arrived in Pakistan to begin production. However the production was shut down as the Inter-Services Intelligence deemed the script too politically sensitive and prevented the shoot. The original script was a set in a music school and was "a lot more campy, a lot more Baz Lurman style" according to Gilmour.

After this set back the “Returning to Australia to make alternative plans would’ve been the sensible conclusion to our adventure. Instead, we went with Plan B and decided to shoot the whole film ourselves in Afghanistan," said Gilmour.

Gilmour and Smith bought the only Sony A7S in Pakistan and two plane tickets to Kabul and headed to Afghanistan to shoot the film. The camera did not have many of the accessories traditionally utilised in a film production such as stabilisation. However it was compact which Gilmour said "was a blessing in disguise," as it better suited their sporadic and dangerous filming schedule.

Once in Kabul Gilmour and Smith sat down with two Afghans, a tour guide and an actor they had hired and talked through the script, which was constantly revised with the assistance of Afghan locals. Gilmour and Smith then went to the Afghanistan Film Commission to acquire permits to film their movie. The Commission was very skeptical, believing Gilmour would tell him he hoped to present Afghanistan in a positive light, and then create a very negative film.

The Afghan people both added and removed scenes from the original screenplay. Some scenes which were removed included one in which Sher Khan looked longingly at a photograph of Marilyn Monroe and scenes involving the Taliban militants constructing improvised explosive device's.

Village in Afghanistan

Shooting in Afghanistan was difficult. Without knowing what the security situation is going to be, who will be near the filming or where you're going to be able to shoot pre-planning became almost impossible. Gilmour described the production as almost "like a news crew," filled with constant tension and adrenaline. Additionally, the crew had to pay the Afghan Police and army in order to prevent their information being sold to Taliban forces.

The harsh landscape and small crew and budget also presented numerous challenges. Gilmour had to be the camera operator and director, which he said took away from his ability to focus on either task completely. Plus, scenes which involved Smith sliding down a mountain of shale became very dangerous as Gilmour had to follow him doing the same thing while holding a camera. Gilmour said he does not believe the shots could have been completed on any other film set due to occupational health and safety requirements.

The end of the film in which Mike Wheeler places himself at the hands of the Jirga was approached to be as real as possible. The crew went to a real village in Afghanistan and briefed the actual village elders that this was a story about a former soldier who was returning to apologise for killing one of the men of their village. Many of the elders had experienced foreign invaders killing people who they were close with. So the Jirga scene played out like a real Tribal Council, with the elders debating how they would deal with such an event if it had really occurred. Some of the elders actually believed Smith was really a soldier returning to their village to confess to killing their people.

Production was completed in 2017.

Release

Jirga premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on June 8, 2018 where it was the only Australian film in competition. Afterwards it was screened at the New Zealand Film Festival and then various other Film Festivals across Australia including CinefestOz, Melbourne International Film Festival and the Adelaide Film Festival. Jirga had it's North American premier at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It was released in Australian Cinemas September 27, 2018.

Critical reception

Jirga currently has a 63% rating on Rotten tomatoes with an average critic rating of 6.4/10 with 8 reviews counted. Luke Buckmaster of The Guardian gave the film 4/5 Stars. Harry Windsor of the Hollywood Report said the film "feels a little obvious and even patronizing: a redemption story by an Australian filmmaker that lets its Australian protagonist off the hook in a manner too neat to be dramatically interesting." Paul Byrnes of the Sydney Morning Herald gives the film 4/5 and calling Gilmour a film maker "with a strange combination of talents: he’s very passionate about trying to make a better world; a little redemptive perhaps, being the son of an Anglican preacher, but crazy brave."

Box office

Jirga has grossed $110,056 across 9 cinemas in 4 weeks. In the first week of release in Australia it was only screened in one cinema, where it made $2 495 in it's first weekend, placing it as the 33rd highest grossing film of the weekend within Australia. In it's second weekend of release it expanded to eight cinemas and grossed $13 859, placing it as the 30th highest grossing film of the weekend.