In August 2021, the United States ended its disastrous 20-year occupation of Afghanistan with a suitably slapdash withdrawal. The Taliban, which had been expelled from power in 2001, retook control. Billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and vehicles were left behind, much of it disabled but restorable, given enough time. Not long after the last US forces left, filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at entered the country. In an impressive coup of access, he managed to become embedded with Taliban forces, spending a year watching them transition from insurgency back to governance. The result is the documentary Hollywoodgate (2023).

The film mostly withholds overt explanation, with the exception of opening and closing montages that include supertitles and narration by Nash’at. Most of the action takes place within a recently abandoned US military complex in Kabul. Mawlawi Mansour, the new head of the Afghan Air Force, is the central figure, directing soldiers in cataloging everything the Americans abandoned — ranging from helicopters to medicine to gym equipment — as part of the effort to build something after so many years of war and destruction.