Tell Spring Not to Come This Year – Review

Most media unforgivingly gestates the idea that the West is at the centre of the world. No matter where you are, what you do, the dominant culture on Earth is the one with the biggest TVs and, by no means unrelated, the biggest guns. We can see this clearly by taking a glance at our DVD and Blu-ray shelves: how many war documentaries have you watched, let alone war movies that were from the point of view of a nation not of Western background? Not that many, probably – but that’s forgivable, seeing as the ratio doesn’t exactly swing in their favour. Tell Spring Not to Come This Year, a brand new documentary from the Afghan frontlines, tells a story few of us have heard.

Meeting the soldiers of the ANA – Afghan National Army – sets most stories straight about this conflicted country almost immediately, fantasies we may have lazily concocted from the safety of our well-sheltered homes thousands of miles away. The young men who make up this unit have joined their national reserve through the most relatable circumstances: unable to get into college, or it being by far the most accessible job to them at the time, the army offered a way out of a bleak future. Of course, what they got instead is probably worse than anything they could have imagined; covering their first year of deployment, without support from NATO, we witness the political whirpool they find themselves trapped in at every single turn. Most of the time, the small band of young soldiers must make their own snap decisions – some of them life and death. It’s a tragic burden none of them should have to face at their tender age, let alone as an isolated batch of what are essentially highly organised mercenaries. The war in Afghan is theirs, painfully and irrevocably, with nothing to do about it but wait until their time with the military is up. Directors Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy never lose sight that this documentary is at its most powerful when being personal, and thanks to its intimacy, a bigger picture unexpectedly forms around these young men.

On those levels, Tell Spring Not to Come This Year is an absolutely essential and long-overdue perspective of a war that has become unbalanced in its representation on our screens. But even though the voiceless have finally been given a mouthpiece, this particular documentary constantly feels like the prelude to an opus, constantly tuning up its instruments – over which it has an admittedly strong mastery – only for the piece to finish before it’s ever truly begun. This is reflected in its 84-minute run time, an outwardly meagre amount of space to cover such vastly complex ground. But that would be ignoring what it does in that time, which is to put the cameras on another side of the conflict – and score it with some beautifully crafted music, too, which helps expand these boys’ experiences beyond the confines of most news, documentary crews, and the film industry in general. Tell Spring Not to Come This Year may feel like a promise of greater things – but promises can be enjoyed, too.