The Limits of Being a Fly on the Wall

Minutes into “Hollywoodgate,” Egyptian director Ibrahim Nash’at explains the handshake deal that allowed him to make the film. He would show the Taliban in a positive light and in return be allowed to trail a high-ranking Taliban leader, Mawlawi Mansour, and a foot soldier named Mukhtar, as they search for new direction in the wake of the tumultuous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. This search would lead to the abandoned American military site that gives the film its title — a base with gates marked “Hollywood Gate” — containing billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment. As he captures suspicious militants whispering casually in Pashto near the beginning of his year-long residency, it is understood by all parties that he will be killed if he fails to follow strict instructions. 

Nash’at’s unprecedented access results, at first, in some jaw-dropping footage of the upper echelons of Taliban rule, including meetings where leaders mapped out a transition to becoming a regional military power. Using voiceover, Nash’at also gestures toward the ethical questions raised by his role as a documentarian, in particular the tension between what he hopes to expose and what he’s allowed and instructed to shoot. But this self-reflexive mode of filmmaking disappears for most of the movie’s 91 minutes, re-appearing (along with Nash’at’s voice) only near the end. The middle of the film — which is to say, the majority of its runtime — captures various Talibs gathering for meals, discussing the roles of women and inspecting U.S. military equipment. But these scenes lack the intimacy and intensity of the movie’s stunning bookends, despite being filmed in close quarters. The camera rarely probes beyond the casual, conversational surface of these exchanges, resulting in a work that meanders as both journalism and cinema.

It feels almost unfair to criticize “Hollwoodgate,” given the great personal risk taken by Nash’at and the danger he now faces after reneging his promise of becoming a propaganda mouthpiece. In one early scene, he films high-ranking Taliban leaders discussing him with paranoia in an adjacent room. At the same time, he captures his one-man operation in a mirror on a nearby wall, becoming the subject of his own documentary thriller in a way that exposes his isolation and vulnerability. However, this dynamic is seldom explored or developed beyond similar glimpses of himself in other reflective surfaces, like car windshields. These glimpses fail to explain much about his developing relationship to the militant officials. Does he gain their trust? Do they continue to mistrust him, or at least grow accustomed to his presence? Since he holds the camera, he’s a character even when he isn’t on screen, but the film rarely transcends a distant, observational approach.

Documentaries, like all movies, are edited and scored. They’re rewritten during the post-production process; their stories are enhanced with artifice. But beyond a few intense notes by composer Volker Bertelmann, “Hollywoodgate” takes little  advantage of these tools. The fearlessness in its shooting is unmatched by ingenuity in its editing.

Instead, “Hollywoodgate” follows its subjects from behind, refusing to expand upon intriguing moments of footage. For instance, Nash’at catches a glimpse of a group of militants filming their own propaganda video in the style of a Hollywood action film. Here is a perfect opportunity to explore the theme of propaganda, something that ostensibly interests Nash’at, according to his own voiceover, but he never pursues this. Where the film might have incorporated existing Taliban propaganda footage, or other historical propaganda reels — a contextual backdrop for the sake of contrast or comparison — it instead displays a misguided fealty to Nash’at’s footage, treating it as the only important puzzle piece in a much larger picture. 

The movie’s vérité fabric, while commendable in its filming, may have benefitted from a more essayistic approach to frame its broader arguments. That it remains tethered to the Taliban’s limitations even in its post-production, long after Nash’at is freed from their instruction, feels thematically appropriate, but results in a work that observes strict boundaries without ever striving to unearth what lies beyond them. “Hollywoodgate” never explores the “why” of its own form.

That American forces left behind vast stockpiles of military equipment yields another theme that the movie doesn’t adequately explore. Afghanistan’s new leaders, through their adoption of leftover American uniforms, vehicles and weaponry, inadvertently ape the country’s most recent occupiers, perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence and oppression. Somehow, all of this flies by the audience without commentary from Nash’at. Though he’s constrained by Taliban guidelines in what he is and isn’t allowed to film, their censors were not present in the editing bay after he left the country. But even in keeping with the movie’s apparent modus operandi, of quietly bearing witness without cutting away from Nash’at’s footage, little in the visual or narrative framing exposes the heart of the Taliban beyond depicting a handful of misogynistic jokes. Only in the film’s climactic scene are we finally afforded a wider perspective on the group’s global ties, their immediate plans and the scale of their operation.  

In these final moments, Nash’at’s voiceover reappears for the first time since the movie’s early scenes, to describe his suspicion that ordinary Afghans are suffering just outside the confines of his frame. However, this dichotomy, of the unseen and hidden becoming subjects unto themselves, isn’t one the movie ever broaches until these final minutes. While “Hollywoodgate” deserves credit as a novelty collection of footage shot where few cameras are allowed to go, its assemblage of that footage is too rote, too linear and too blinkered to land with much emotional or political impact.