KABUL — Taliban have dissolved the Afghan Film Organization, once the country’s only state-run film body, and closed its offices, according to four sources, including two familiar with the agency’s operations.
No formal statement has been issued by the Taliban. However, staff have been informed that the institution’s structure has been nullified and its operations halted.
Founded in 1968 during the reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, Afghan Film served for decades as the backbone of Afghanistan’s cinematic and documentary production. It played a pivotal role in preserving the country’s visual history — from newsreels in the 1970s to feature-length fiction films under the Republic.
The agency also housed a valuable film archive, much of which was hidden or smuggled abroad during the civil war and the Taliban’s first rule in the 1990s to prevent its destruction.
Prior to the fall of the Republic in 2021, Afghan Film operated under the Ministry of Information and Culture and employed between 30 and 40 staff across departments including production, archiving, film restoration, and digitization. In its final years, it had initiated modernization efforts and digital preservation projects to safeguard its historic collection.
The institution’s shuttering comes amid a broader Taliban crackdown on cultural and artistic life in Afghanistan. Since the group’s return to power in August 2021, public music has been banned, murals painted over, and women barred from performing arts. Artists have faced exile, threats, and forced silence.
“Artistic life in Afghanistan has collapsed,” said one Kabul-based filmmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “Afghan Film was not just a building — it was the custodian of our cinematic memory.”
The last known head of Afghan Film, Sahraa Karimi, fled the country in August 2021 as the Taliban seized control of Kabul. Since then, the agency has operated in a reduced, ad hoc capacity, with little public visibility and no new productions.
The fate of the archive — thousands of reels chronicling decades of Afghan life — remains uncertain. Cultural preservationists fear it may be at risk of neglect, censorship, or erasure.
For many artists and historians, the closure of Afghan Film is a devastating loss. It follows the weakening or destruction of numerous cultural institutions under Taliban rule, and marks what many see as an ongoing effort to erase public memory and silence the arts.
