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Passing the Rainbow looks at ways of subverting the strict gender norms in Afghan society, in areas like performance and film production as well as in daily and political life. A theatre company run by a young teacher in Kabul who moonlights as an actress, a policewoman who also directs action films, an activist with the organisation RAWA who defends the radical separation of State and religion, and Malek, who lives as if she were a boy in order to get a job: these women are the heroines of Passing the Rainbow.

US military commanders have released a series of reports and recommendations in recent weeks on Afghanistan, and their conclusions have been sobering. General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has stated that success in the fight against the Taliban cannot be taken for granted, advising the White House that more troops and a new strategy are needed to turn the tide. While the US and Nato face their highest casualty rates of the conflict, widespread fraud in the recent presidential election has raised questions about just what kind of political system US and Nato troops are dying to protect. In the midst of these military and political crises, Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan's most notorious warlord, who has been a powerful player in the country's politics for three decades, returned to the country. General Dostum had been living in exile in Turkey for nine months because of ongoing criminal and human rights investigations against him. However, he was invited back into the country by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, two days before this year's presidential election to take a prominent role in Karzai's election campaign. Karzai hails his warlord allies as national heroes, but what does their return to political prominence mean for Afghan democracy? In the run up to the election, American filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jason Motlagh travelled to Dostum's stronghold in northern Afghanistan to get the first TV interview with him since his return.

Though they would eventually kidnap him, the Taliban granted journalist Paul Refsdal unprecedented access. This exclusive documentary shows us a side of the Taliban we have never seen before. Today, the Taliban seem to survive mainly on conviction: "We belong to God and fear no-one". From their mountain hideout, they ambush the daily American convoys, descending into joyous shouts of "Allah Akhbar", when a truck is hit. But a hit on target is rare. And the Americans' response is swift and deadly: a US gunship kills Commander Dawran's second-in command, and Refsdal is told to flee and to return in a month. Dawran escapes unharmed, but his two children are killed.