User Reviews

Ajmal Naqshbandi made his living dangerously: he helped western journalists establish contact with Taliban insiders, enabling intrepid scribes to get the scoop on more risk-averse corporate writers. One of his employers was Nation writer Christian Parenti, who traveled to Afghanistan in 2007 to try and gain access to euphonious Taliban bigwig Mullah Dadullah. Instead, Parenti got a story he'd rather have done without: Islamic fundamentalists kidnapped and murdered Naqshbandi, whose tragic fate is related in this grueling doc from filmmaker Ian Olds (Occupation Dreamland). An award-winner at 2009's Tribeca Film Festival, Fixer is not for the faint of heart, and features some extremely unpleasant edited excerpts from the Taliban's own (non-award winning) videos. Vividly comparing the value placed on the lives of westerners with the lives of Afghan citizens by the puppet government of Hamid Karzai, this is one of the saddest and bleakest films you'll ever see.