Films don’t always turn out in the way you expect. When Slovenian director Haidy Kancler began work on a feature doc, then called Skiing in Scarves, the expectation was that its three young Afghan female characters would have enriching and uplifting experiences in the west. They were travelling to Europe to become professionals instructors.
The eventual title of the documentary, Melting Dreams, hints at what actually happened to the protagonists.
Kancler’s film, sold by CAT&Docs, is an international premiere in Thessaloniki’s Newcomers Competition. She was inspired to make it after reading an article about a Slovenian woman teaching skiing in Afghanistan.
“I was very curious about her motivation…why she is teaching skiing in Afghanistan and not Slovenia where skiing is very popular and ski teachers are needed [and] very well paid,” the director remembers.
To find out more, Kancler made her own “discovery trip” to Bamyan in Afghanistan in 2017. There was a thriving ski school there, and women were allowed to participate.
“I fell in love with the way they [the Afghans] perceived sport, especially the girls. It didn’t matter what clothes they wore, what skis they [had]. None of them were scared of falling,” Kancler describes the obvious joy of the participants in the sport they had just discovered.
The young Afghan skiers would never complain about the weather. Whether it was cloudy or freezing, or even if there were heavy winds, they would still take to the slopes. They didn’t have cable cars or ski lifts but clambered to the top of the mountains the best they could.
“Even if they could not feel their hands or feet sometimes, they were still so happy having the opportunity to be outside. Also, the boys and girls could spend some time together.”
Kancler was also impressed by the young Afghans’ determination to make skiing a part of everyday life – a pastime they and future generations would be able to enjoy. She did notice, however, hints of tensions behind the scenes. Some skiers, it seemed, were “more privileged” than others.
“This idyllic picture started to vanish with every day I spent there,” Kancler observes. “Melting Dreams is not a film we wanted to shoot – it’s a film that happened.”
There have been plenty of films giving a western perspective on Afghanistan. Kancler, though, was determined to be as honest as possible about the experiences of her three Afghan protagonists when they came to the west.
The documentary turned out to be “a huge personal challenge” for everyone involved. This was an expensive and complicated undertaking. Visas needed to be secured for the three women to travel to Slovenia. Kancler describes the Afghans as her friends. “I cared for them very much.” It was therefore even more uncomfortable for her when “everything goes not according to the plan.”
When they arrived in Slovenia, the three young Afghans struggled for acceptance. They were neither fit enough nor sufficiently motivated to excel in their skiing. Their long-suffering instructor was baffled by their behaviour. They were being given a unique opportunity (“they had the best possible options every kid in Europe would dream of”) but remained too apathetic even to turn up to training on time. At the school they attended for a few days, they’d get upset because no-one would sit next to them in the cafeteria.
“Teenagers can be cruel among themselves,” Kancler reflects. “(But) When you come to another culture, I think you have to be the one who comes forward…kids started losing interest and if you don’t step on the train, then they go.”
The director says she “didn’t get the feeling” that the Afghan girls were being shunned, or that they were being pushed into situations that were awkward for them. Nonetheless, it soon became clear that the three girls weren’t ready to fight for their dreams.
“What was the thing that made them change their mind? I don’t know,” the director acknowledges. She speculates that at least two of them had been more interested in trying to find a way to stay in Europe and claim asylum than they ever were in skiing.
When two of the girls returned to Afghanistan, they were expelled from the ski club. It was felt they had brought shame on their community. The girls responded by making threats against the filmmaker, accusing Kancler of “destroying their lives.”
“For me, it was a huge emotional throwback…it impacted me in a way that I was sorry I even started making this film.”
Since the documentary was completed, the Taliban have come back to power in Afghanistan. The idea of Afghan ski resorts attracting western visitors is therefore now nothing but a pipe dream. The three Afghan women are now back in the west. One is in Germany, one in Italy and one in the US. They haven’t seen the film yet but the director “will not hesitate” to show it to them.
And, no, Kancler never really considered abandoning the project. “I knew immediately I had to make a film out of this terrible situation because there was no other way…my heart was really scared and really worried while my rational director’s point of view was, like, you cannot let this story go – you have to tell this story.”
Melting Dreams was made through the production company Studio Virc as a co-production with Flair Film, Kinocompany and RTV Slovenija. Other supporters include Slovenian Film Centre, Creative Europe – MEDIA, Austrian Film Institute, FISA Austria, Cine Tirol Film Commission, Finnish Film Foundation, YLE Finland and Al Jazeera.
