Written for RAF News August 2024

Days after the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at immerses himself in their deserted military base in Kabul and its new inhabitants—the Taliban air force regiment.

Taking its name from the compound in which most of this documentary is shot, the Taliban forces first appear like kids who have been left home alone, playing dress-up in US military gear and shooting their guns at the surrounding mountains, propping open the automatic gates to this former CIA stronghold in case they get locked out.

Following the new head of Afghanistan’s air force, Mawlawi Mansour, we watch as they excitedly poke around the gym equipment, talking about how they will train their army here. They rustle through crates of expired medical supplies that could have massively helped the ailing population, and delight in the array of abandoned and sabotaged aircraft that they are determined to fix up. Multiple Black Hawk helicopters, B-35 bombers, and fighter jets are found partly dismantled, the base filled with over $7 billion in American weaponry.

Lacking rudimentary education, the promises of restoring the base and aircraft appear like self-deluding wishes and puffed-up propaganda, but the reality of their competence is shocking. There is a feeling that maybe these officials aren’t being serious or aren’t to be taken seriously—but this will change.

Mansour doesn’t appear too menacing, but then he knows there is a camera on him. Moments of darkness are heard in his values, while the camera is instructed to be turned off at other times. Even though director Nash’at has been granted access, there is an unbelievably palpable tension and unease throughout. Many moments are captured in which veiled threats are made to him. At one point, someone warns that ‘the little devil’ is filming, but is reassured with: ‘if his intentions are bad, he will die soon.’

A fly on the wall in a house of spiders, Hollywoodgate is equally fascinating and frightening.

Review for RAF News July 2024

A professional actor and his pregnant wife are safe-proofing the house and changing their lifestyle – not just preparing their home for the baby on the way, but fortifying against something far more sinister that haunts their nights.

Sleep, the Korean horror debut of Jason Yu, opens appropriately with the sound of deep, guttural snoring. The culprit is Hyun-su (the late Lee Sun-kyun), an Oscar winner who now sits bolt up right at end of the bed muttering that “someone is inside”, panicking wife Soo-Jin (Jung Yu-mi) to high alert before he cosily returns to sleep. 

There is a deft mix of dark humour and creeping dread, that eases the tension with perfectly timed comic relief, especially as Hyun-su’s nighttime escapades become more unpredictable and violent: one scratching fit early on leaves gashes in his face. When he starts to sleepwalk and roam about the apartment, they begin to fear for the safety of Pepper, their little Pomeranian, as well as the unborn baby.

An executive by profession, Soo-Jin is a pragmatist and so she waves off her mother’s spiritual notions and instead meets every potential hazard with a solution, beginning with a trip to the sleep clinic. Here they will learn that Hyun-su’s nocturnal activities are all symptoms of a stress induced sleep disorder, but the question is whether they can help before he does anything drastic.

Sleekly made with a style that complements its suspenseful turns and moments of gore, Sleep sets its story up neatly and commits to its level of escalation. A fun and sometimes wince inducing horror that does a great job of treading the line between heightened reality and the supernatural.