‘I had tears streaming’: a sobering film about the last months of the Afghan war

‘They didn’t leave winning. They left losing. No matter what your belief sets are, we lost the war’ … a still from Retrograde. Photograph: Film PR handout

Wearing a dark hijab and gripping the wire fence, a young Afghan woman shakes her head slightly, seemingly fights back tears, searches the faces of American soldiers, glances away pensively then looks back in anger, her eyes gleaming like black diamonds.

“She writes a novella for us in 36 seconds,” director Matthew Heineman says of the lingering shot that closes his documentary film Retrograde. “I’m curious what you interpreted in her face? To me it speaks volumes.”