Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi

A reporter who comes to a foreign country, seldom speaks the language and is often unfamiliar with the culture. Even for an experienced journalist, it is difficult to understand the finer points of local morals. For that, one has the so-called fixers. Often they are also journalists who literally and figuratively know their way around and know when something is wrong.
Ian Olds (1972) followed the American journalist Christian Parenti and his fixer, the Afghani journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi, for the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. The film is open-hearted and intimate, but also tragic and moving, because from the very first scenes, it's clear that 24-year-old Naqshbandi is no longer alive.
In 2005 Olds directed with Garrett Scott the film Occupation: Dreamland, about a group of very young American soldiers in Iraq. After Scott died suddenly, Olds made Fixer. The film was intended as a glimpse behind the scenes of the approach of a news reporter, but during shooting, a nightmare scenario emerged. During his work, Naqshbandi ended up in an ambush. He was kidnapped alongside the Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. The Italian was freed, Naqshbandi was not. Olds' both intelligent and committed film sketches a depressing picture of the future of Afghanistan, but is at the same time a homage to the 'best fixer in Afghanistan'. (GT)