The most recent film by one of the masters of the new Iranian cinema, Kandahar, inspired by true events, is the timely story of a woman’s attempt to enter Afghanistan to reach her sister in the Taliban-controlled city of Kandahar. Disguising herself in the required head-to-toe burkha, the expatriate Nafas—a Canadian journalist who fled her native Afghanistan as a teenager—wends her way to Kandahar in the company of a string of Afghan characters, since it is illegal for women to travel alone. Adding to the suspense is the stringent time frame in which Nafas must complete her mission: her sister, maimed by a land mine and in despair over the condition of women in her country, has threatened to commit suicide at the next solar eclipse, only three days away. Kandahar won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and is being distributed in the United States by Avatar films.