While the depth of Hollywoodgate is limited by its very nature, the footage Nash'at shows us is of immense value... [Full Review in Spanish]

| Dec 21, 2024

A fascinating documentary that offers a rare glimpse behind the curtain of extremism.

| Nov 14, 2024

How Nash’at managed to get himself and his film out is another story, one that presumably could not be told here for safety reasons. Still, an amazing piece of work and an example of true journalistic bravery.

| Nov 14, 2024

Ibrahim Nash’at’s Hollywoodgate pointedly shows the power of the Taliban, with a quietly menacing focus on the role the US and NATO played in encouraging it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2024

Hollywoodgate shows the disturbing results of the power vacuum created by US military intervention in Afghanistan.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 17, 2024

The footage is almost heart-stoppingly raw, peppered with real-life humour even as it chills us to the bone. It's a documentary unlike anything else out there, and what it reveals is intensely urgent.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2024

Its degree of difficulty was extremely high, perhaps the highest of any nonfiction film this year

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 6, 2024

“Hollywoodgate” is a fascinatingly — and sometimes frustratingly — oblique portrait of a country and its people in the tragic grip of extremism.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2024

In an impressive coup of access, filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at managed to become embedded with Taliban forces, spending a year watching them transition from insurgency back to governance.

| Aug 21, 2024

Hollywoodgate doesn’t offer any solutions to the situation in Afghanistan, instead observing how absolute power corrupts on both sides.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2024

[A] fascinating, chilling film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2024

Perhaps the most chilling thing of all is that the documentary was done with the full approval of the Taliban: this is how they want to appear.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2024

It’s a fascinating, chilling, if limited study of how the endless cycle of global warfare plays out.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2024

It’s not often that you see a prestige documentary where the film-maker is in constant danger of being summarily executed by his subjects, but that is the central sickening tension that drives this superlative movie from Ibrahim Nash’at.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2024

Offering an intimate look at their daily lives, Nash’at’s film does a rather brilliant job of offering a raw and uncompromising insight into Afghanistan’s new ruling class, who allow him to film them, despite their obvious mistrust for him throughout.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2024

Hollywoodgate is a remarkable fly-on-the-wall documentary from Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash'at which shadows the Taliban in the aftermath as its sets about reinstating its medieval caliphate.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2024

What goes unseen? Ordinary Afghans. But then, the film’s sharpest insight is tied up with what is missing from the picture: none of the Taliban want Nash’at to record the actual people they govern.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2024

Hollywoodgate was a powerful concept, but it lets the Taliban have the last laugh.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2024

Hollywoodgate is revelatory: truly brave film-making.

| Aug 14, 2024

Is the documentary Hollywoodgate propaganda for the Taliban in Afghanistan, or is it a warning to people who oppose the Taliban? Hollywoodgate has elements of both because it's a raw chronicle that came with filming restrictions.

| Aug 10, 2024