{"id":947856,"date":"2026-07-20T17:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T17:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/947856\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T17:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T17:20:18","slug":"lineout-director-nazila-azizi-on-capturing-afghan-refugee-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/947856\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018LineOut\u2019 Director Nazila Azizi On Capturing Afghan Refugee Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOnly a few years ago, Nazila Azizi<\/a> was dodging bullets fired by the Taliban and trying to climb aboard one of the last evacuation flights out of Kabul. Today, the Afghan native is an architect and filmmaker, with a documentary in contention for Academy Award recognition.<\/p>\n

\n\tLineOut<\/a>, now on an Oscar qualifying run in Los Angeles, explores the psychic space of refugees forced to abandon home. It begins with footage Azizi shot on her cell phone as she fled her birthplace, but this is not a straightforward account of leaving Afghanistan as the Taliban overwhelmed the capital. That sort of thing, Azizi says, \u201c[you can see] on the news. You can see what\u2019s going on in different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, the director takes an abstract approach, venturing into magical realism.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Nazila Azizi attends the DaVinci International Film Festival on October 10, 2025 in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVivien Killilea\/Getty Images for DaVinci International Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn magical realism, you make the impossible believable,\u201d Azizi explained at special screening of LineOut in Beverly Hills last week. \u201cYou make it easy to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker achieves that through poetic narration that anthropomorphizes home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLike your trembling shadows, like the echo of your footsteps, I am a whisper from within you,\u201d the narration thrums. \u201cYou know me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI started writing this as a therapy for myself. I started talking to home to see if I can find it,\u201d Azizi said. \u201cAnd then when I wrote it \u2013 she found me. I found her\u2026 To me, [home] was a [woman].\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Anousha\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAnousha<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAnousha Instagram page<\/p>\n

\n\tTo voice the words, Azizi turned to actress Anousha, who was born in Shiraz, Iran and has faced her own journey of displacement. Anousha said she didn\u2019t want her voiceover to sound theatrical, but more intimate and personal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Nazila] gave me the script and it\u2019s so poetic,\u201d she said at the Q&A. \u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019m going to focus on one person and I\u2019m going to gift this script to this one person.\u2019 And I kept thinking, \u2018Who should be that person?\u2019 \u2026Maybe that\u2019s my inner child. That\u2019s the little Anousha that left Shiraz, then left Tehran, then left London, then San Francisco, then New York.\u2019 \u2026I was like, \u2018If I can just give my focused love to my inner child, probably the voice of home is going to come out authentic, as authentic as possible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe magical realism manifests in images of turbulent ocean waters, perhaps a gesture to the toll of migrants lost in the Mediterranean. This year alone, more than 50 Afghans have died while trying to cross that body of water to escape Taliban rule, according to reports. Home itself seems drowned, in the words of the film\u2019s narrator.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDeep beneath the waves I found myself confined,\u201d the narrator says. \u201cMy thoughts constantly drift to my children above. Are they lost in sorrow? Or do they find brief moments of joy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Amelia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAmelia Pavlovska in \u2018LineOut\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLaan Multimedia<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sense of loss pervades LineOut. In dream-like sequences, a small child is seen alone on a beach. With a stick, she carves the outline of a dwelling, but the surf effaces it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe little girl keeps drawing the house on the sand and it keeps being washed away with the water,\u201d noted Anousha. \u201cYou\u2019re forced to repeat this thing that you want from life and just have to be steady with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA necessary part of healing is to experience grief, the film suggests. While fleeing Afghanistan with other refugees, Azizi said she observed, \u201cNobody had time to process the grief. You could see the anxiety, you could see the sadness somehow, but\u2026 it wasn\u2019t the real acknowledgement of, \u2018I missed home.\u2019 \u2026 That\u2019s all I\u2019m trying to do, is to open a space for this whole new generation of Afghans coming here and those who have been evacuated, those who are being born [to] parents who are carrying this pain and transferring all this pain to the next generation\u2026 to open a space for grief to be acknowledged.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAzizi referenced the 13th century poet Rumi, who was forced to flee home in what is now Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Mongols. \u201cAs Rumi said, \u2018When sorrow is at the door, invite it in\u2019. So. when the grief is already at the door, we have no other choice [but] to invite it in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAn example of Azila Azizi\u2019s lighting design work<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNazilaAzizi.com<\/p>\n

\n\tSince settling in the U.S., Azizi has worked in film, architecture, and design, creating \u2013 among other things \u2013 urban installations and theater lighting design concepts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter coming here, academically and in terms of finding a career, I had so many good opportunities,\u201d the filmmaker said. \u201cI started living a life, but I was also crying. It took me maybe two years because I just began missing home the moment I left. And I still do. I still miss home. But for the first two years it was like constant crying. LineOut helped me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnousha could identify with that duality as someone making a new home far away from where they were born.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was exactly like both the good side and bad side, which was nothing is familiar, everything is unknown, but the good side was nothing was familiar. Everything is unknown. I can make it right,\u201d Aousha said. \u201cThe only thing that I could carry with me was me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'LineOut'\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018LineOut\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLaan Multimedia<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, the self is the only constant. The place Azizi thought of as home, in a sense, no longer exists. The tide, in the form of the conquering Taliban, has washed it away.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHome is lovely as long as it\u2019s really home and not a cage, not a prison,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in a home [where] you are being killed and you are being tortured, you\u2019re being suppressed and all this, it stops feeling like home\u2026 It\u2019s not home anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only a few years ago, Nazila Azizi was dodging bullets fired by the Taliban and trying to climb…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":947857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[142411,171,381695,53,381696,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-947856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-awardsdoc","tag-entertainment","tag-lineout","tag-movies","tag-nazila-azizi","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116953457179782062","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}