The Smell of Paradise is a road movie, a personal adventure, not without personal risk, that starts in Chechnya in 1995, and ends in Waziristan, along the Afghan-Pakistan border, in the summer of 2004. The film maps out the ideas of the “fundamentalist international”, ideas that put our Western democratic beliefs about society to the test. What inspires the Osama’s of this world? What drives people to fight against our Western world with the Koran in one hand and a rifle in the other, with Truth as their only argument? What is so irresistible about the smell of paradise? These are the urgent questions with which the two Polish filmmakers Marcin Mamon and Mariusz Pilis travel around the world for more than ten years now. On their long journey they met with warlords, clan-leaders, emirs and mullahs, with terrorists and ‘godfathers’, but foremost with many common believers of Dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam.
Variety 13/09/05 (by Eddie Cockrell) Seen in Toronto
‘A decade in the making, this work is a testament to the tenacity and bravery of helmers, who travel from Kabul to Kandahar in search of prominent purveyors of the absolutist Islamic line: Believe in Allah and his teachings, or remain ignorant.’
Festivals:
World premiere, Toronto IFF, Real to Reel Programme, Canada 2005; IDFA Highlights of the Lowlands 2005; Cracow Film Festival, Polen 2005; Bergen Film Festival (BIFF) 2005; Sao Paolo October 2005; 16th Stockholm IFF, Collage Section 2005; CPH:DOX – Copenhagen 2005; Jihalava IDDF, Czech Republic, 2005; Al Jazeera International Festival, in competition 2007