In Hollywoodgate, Egyptian director Ibrahim Nash’at, takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to observe what the Taliban did with some of the $7 billion of military hardware left behind by the Americans when they scrambled to withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2021. (You can watch Hollywoodgate on the BBC iPlayer.)

To get the misleading title of Nash’at’s film out of the way, it is named after ‘Hollywood Gate 1’, the entrance to the Kabul Airbase, where much of the narrative unfolds. That is as close to Hollywood as this film gets.

Nash’at has been granted access to follow two individuals through an entire year: Taliban commander Mawlawi Mansour, who has been made commander of the air force, and Lieutenant M.J. Mukhtar, a Taliban soldier who takes a six-month course to qualify as a pilot of Blackhawk helicopters.

This is a fly-on-the-wall documentary in which the fly is constantly at risk of being swatted. Nash’at’s presence is occasionally challenged by a bystander. ‘If his intentions are bad, he will die soon,’ says Mansour early on. ‘That little devil is filming,’ someone says to Lt Mukhtar. ‘I hope he doesn’t bring us shame in front of China.’

While Mansour has the authority of a revered leader – his father (successor to the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Omar) was killed in a US drone strike on his car in 2016 – he also has a ready smile and chuckles over the fatuities of the American withdrawal.

What we see in this documentary is equally fatuous. In an early scene, when the Taliban are inspecting the abandoned medical supplies at the base, Mansour instructs an underling to bring in health personnel to check the expiration dates. Several months later we learn that this instruction has not been followed.

In one memorable comic moment, Mansour asks ‘What’s 67 times 100?’ in a meeting about financial matters. The other participants offer various guesses till one settles on 67,000 and this is solemnly written down without correction.

Such incompetence gives the lie to the hubristic comment by one Talib that if only we had the same technology as the United States ‘we will rule the world’.

We see little of life outside the airbase, just some footage of congested traffic in the centre of Kabul. As you might expect, there are few references to, let alone glimpses of, Afghan women. We see a female newsreader on television, but the only part of her that is uncovered is a slit for her eyes.

This prompts Lt Mukhtar to offer his opinion on the subject of covered females. A Muslim, he said, was having a conversation with an infidel who believed women should be free to wear what clothes they like. The Muslim unwrapped a chocolate, threw it on the ground and asked the infidel to eat it. The infidel said, ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because it’s dirty.’ So the Muslim said, ‘Our women are like these chocolates. An uncovered woman is like an unwrapped chocolate. When a chocolate touches the ground, it gets dirty and inedible.’ Mukhtar chuckles at this parable.

One shocking image comes when we see a large pile of clothes at a street intersection, cars whizzing past on either side. The pile shifts slightly and we realise that it is a fully-clothed beggarwoman.

Repairs to the aircraft proceed gradually, with an emphasis on the bombers. Meanwhile, we see Lt Mukhtar drive out into the mountains to visit the shrine to his martyred little brother.

The culmination of the documentary is the military parade and flypast at Bagram Airfield on the Taliban’s first Independence Day in 2022. A Russian diplomat introduces himself to Mansour. (This is not long after we have seen Mansour laughing at Russia’s inglorious situation in Ukraine and saying the Russians have been cursed.) A small cluster of Chinese diplomats are glimpsed wearing surgical masks. Mansour wanders around with a walkie-talkie that has an unusually long aerial. Apart from the planes and helicopters, the suicide bombing battalion ride past on motorbikes.

The Taliban may have got their airplanes and helicopters to fly, but it is not clear that they yet have the necessary supplies of ordinance to pursue a significant conflict with a neighbouring state. Presumably that’s why they are cosying up to the Chinese.

There are oblique references to insurgents attacking from the neighbouring republic of Tajikistan. These are members of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (or Second Resistance), successor to the Taliban’s former enemy, the Northern Alliance. ‘Death is new to them,’ one Talib sycophant says to Mansour. ‘They’ll run when you strike.’

There is no attempt at analysis in Hollywoodgate and very little commentary. An ominous musical score of mournful rasping cellos (the Budapest Art Orchestra) is all the more ominous for being sparingly deployed. Nash’at confines himself to the voiceover commentary that accompanies footage of Mansour on the phone threatening the Tajik ministry of defence and flying in a helicopter. ‘What I tried to show is what I saw,’ he says in conclusion. ‘Because I held this camera, I was kept away from the daily suffering of the Afghans. Yet I feel it everywhere I go… One thing I cannot move past is the obscene power of those who worship war and the pain that it causes for generations.’