TALK WITH ATIQ RAHIMI

The adaptation of a novel to a film

How to transpose a written story into a picture

MONDAY, 21 NOVEMBER FROM 3 TO 5 P.M. AMPHITHEATRE 3000

Grade 10 Students (Secondes)

Atiq RAHIMI, born 26 February 1962 in Kabul, is a French-Afghan writer and filmmaker.

He was seventeen years old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan during the war and was eventually granted political asylum in France in 1984.

Rahimi joined a Paris-based production company where he produced seven documentaries for French television, as well as several commercials. After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Rahimi returned to Afghanistan, where he filmed an adaptation of his novel “Earth and Ashes.” He has become renowned as a maker of documentary and feature films, as well as a writer. The film of “Earth and Ashes” was in the Official Selection at Cannes in 2004 and won several prizes. Since 2002 Rahimi has returned to Afghanistan a number of times to set up a Writers’ House in Kabul. His novel The Patience Stone won the Prix Goncourt in 2008. He also published his fourth novel “A Curse on Dostoevsky” in 2013.

Rahimi also created and developed Tolo TV’s “Raz ha een Khana” (Secrets of this House), Afghanistan’s first soap opera. The hugely popular “Secrets of this House” took the Special Award at the Seoul Drama Awards in October 2008.