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- 2019
- Grasshopper Film
- 1 h 57 m
- 2019
- Grasshopper Film
- 1 h 57 m
Summary Angels Are Made of Light traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. Interweaving the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, the film offers an intimate and nuanced vision of a society living in the shadow of war.
Directed By: James Longley
- 2019
- Grasshopper Film
- 1 h 57 m
- 2019
- Grasshopper Film
- 1 h 57 m
Angels Are Made of Light
82
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Where to Watch
Summary Angels Are Made of Light traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. Interweaving the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, the film offers an intimate and nuanced vision of a society living in the shadow of war.
Directed By: James Longley
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 9 Critic Reviews
82
89% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
11% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 9 Critic Reviews
82
89% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
11% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
What is life like on the ground for ordinary people in another culture, another world? That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to his Afghanistan-set Angels Are Made of Light.
Angels Are Made of Light serves as a lament for a prosperous past that can’t be reclaimed, a volatile present that affords few prospects for joy or success, and a future that’s terrifyingly uncertain.
Longley’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “Iraq in Fragments” finds a way to negotiate between empathy and condescension.
The director finds beauty everywhere — in a cloud of dust, a traffic jam, the raucous din of children at play. And wherever such beauty exists, we imagine, hope can never be entirely absent.
For viewers who adjust to its deliberately slow rhythms, the reward is a vivid portrait of daily life in Kabul and a rich look into childhood from the perspective of children who have every reason to expect the worst.
The film is an intimate portrait of a nation terminally anxious about who will see fit to rule it next.
At its best, which is often enough, the film does provide that sort of intimate and evocative insight into a culture too often vilified due to Western ignorance. At others, the gentle exquisiteness with which Longley approaches even the most unappealing sights and sounds feels like an evasion of something more troubling, and potentially more profound.
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Production Company
Daylight Factory,
Final Cut for Real,
Louverture Films,
Piraya Film
Release Date Jul 24, 2019
Duration 1 h 57 m
Genres
Awards
Camden International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Cleveland International Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
Istanbul Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
