Escape from Kabul

Eighteen days at Kabul airport in August 2021. Jamie Roberts builds his documentary out of three vantage points and lets all three speak inside the same film: Afghan civilians trying to get onto a plane, the US Marines ordered to run the evacuation, and Taliban commanders who had just taken the city. Much of the footage was shot on phones and helmet cameras, from both sides of the gate. The crowd pressed against the wire, the people clinging to a departing aircraft, the effort to get one family member through the cordon, and then the suicide bombing. Roberts defends no one and flattens no one into a stock enemy; each person explains what they did and why in their own words. Around 124,000 people were flown out by the end of the airlift, and far more were left behind. The film keeps both of those numbers in view.