SWEETWATER COUNTY — The Sweetwater County Board of Cooperative Educational Services (SBOCES) will be hosting a screening of the film Retrograde on Thursday, October 13, at the Broadway Theater.
Refreshments will be served in the lobby at 6:30 p.m. prior to the screening. The screening will then take place at 7 p.m. with a Q&A session with the film’s Executive Producer Baktash Ahadi.
Retrograde captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives: one of the last U.S. Special Forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general and his corps fighting to defend their homeland against all odds, and the civilians desperately attempting to flee as the country collapses and the Taliban takes over.
From rarely seen operational control rooms to the frontlines of battle to the chaotic Kabul airport during the final U.S. withdrawal, Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman’s latest film offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America’s longest war, and the costs endured for those most intimately involved. The film, a National Geographic production, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, and has been short listed by both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter as a front runner for an Oscar for Best Documentary Film.
Executive Producer Baktash Ahadi is a former advisor, mentor, and translator for the U.S. Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan.
Baktash was a young boy when his family escaped Afghanistan and was granted asylum in the U.S. Although he was secure here as an American citizen, he volunteered to return to Afghanistan to work as a U.S. military interpreter to help fight the Taliban. He returned to the U.S. after several years of service and, in 2014, completed his MA in global security studies at Johns Hopkins University, magna cum laude. He is an engaging speaker, producer, and writer.
