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You can make a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, The Independent Filmmaker Project.
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Synopsis
Acclaimed scholar and filmmaker Carol Dysinger was embedded with international forces in Afghanistan when her unit’s colonel was assigned to investigate the shooting of a teenager. What begins as the colonel’s investigation becomes Dysinger’s, as she befriends the mother of the victim and is slowly welcomed into the domestic world of Afghan women, so rarely seen onscreen. But as Dysinger works, she becomes part of that family, moving from documentarian to participant — and finally witnesses, in astonishingly close quarters, the catastrophic consequences of the American invasion.
Dysinger was uniquely positioned to capture this story. She’d been working in Afghanistan since 2005, when she began her acclaimed film Camp Victory, Afghanistan which documented a detente turned friendship between a US Colonel and Afghan General. In months on base with these men, Dysinger achieved the verité filmmaker’s goal of near invisibility — as well as the trust of her sources. She also produced a unique cache of footage. One Bullet began in the editing room for Camp Victory, when Dysinger, reviewing what she’d shot, became haunted by one of the casualties she’d documented — 16-year old Fahim. Struck by a bullet one evening in front of his home, Fahim was paralyzed — and despite the American investigation, never compensated. In 2011, Dysinger returned to find out Fahim’s fate.
And this is how she met Bibi.
Bibi Hajji is a fiercely devout widow and mother of 11 children. In the wake of Fahim’s death, Bibi and Dysinger strike up a friendship that quickly destroys the conventions of documentary filmmaking. Bibi insists on breaking the fourth wall, and soon hijacks the whole film — dismissing, at risk to herself and family, the Afghan men around her who say: “Don’t let that American film you.”
Bibi lets Dysinger film anyway, doggedly capturing the sprawling fallout of that single bullet which killed Fahim. The resulting film speaks to a whole war — and America’s decline on the world stage. It also speaks to the most pressing issues of identity politics in film making, as Dysinger grapples with her own role in ongoing events. “Ultimately, I stopped acting like the American savior who could achieve justice,” she says, “and accepted my status as a women, foreigner and friend." As a consequence, her film not only documents tragedy, it tells the story of an unlikely and inspiring friendship. Like Afghanistan itself, Bibi doesn't need saving. She’s a survivor. And in Dysinger’s hands, her family’s story propels One Bullet, Afghanistan into ranks of essential films about Afghanistan, America, and the reality of war.