At Five in the Afternoon 2003

Nogreh is a young woman living in a war-torn Kabul, sharing a fragile home with her father, sister-in-law, and the sister-in-law’s baby. She covertly attends an all-girls school, defying her conservative father’s wishes, and she clings to a hopeful dream: to one day become president.

She is one of the few students at the school who imagines a future where leadership belongs to someone like her. After class, while searching for water, she encounters truckloads of refugees returning from Pakistan and takes it upon herself to help them resettle in the ruins around the family’s fragile shelter. The influx soon overwhelms their space, and they are pushed out by other families who need shelter too. Their refuge becomes a fragile thread, first in the ruins and then in an abandoned airplane, which also grows crowded as more and more displaced people arrive.

In the ruins, she crosses paths with a refugee who is a poet, a man whose own knowledge of power is uncertain. The Poet listens as the young woman shares her daring ambition to be president, and his curiosity about her resolve grows into practical help. He assists her in gathering political speeches and accompanies her to a photographer to obtain campaign portraits, a quiet stride toward the political stage she longs to enter.

Meanwhile, the harsh truth lands closer to home. The father learns from one of the refugees that his son has died. He chooses not to reveal this tragedy to his daughter-in-law and instead moves the family deeper into the desert, where their grandson dies from malnutrition and deprivation. The journey into the arid emptiness becomes a grim test of endurance and loyalty, a shift from cramped ruins to an unforgiving landscape.

In the endless desert, they encounter an old man waiting by a dying donkey, a figure who has been trying to reach the city to speak on behalf of Osama Bin Laden in a bid to influence what would become of him once captured. The elder’s presence underscores the frailty of their world and the weight of distant conflicts pressing in on their lives. The father tells him that time has run out and that the Americans have already invaded Afghanistan. After the burial of his grandson, the family presses on, deeper into the desert, where the road ahead remains uncertain but the will to endure stubbornly persists.