Forgotten on the Roof of the World

The Wakhan Corridor, a thin finger of land in northeast Afghanistan, is an incredibly tough place to live. North of Pakistan, bordering China and North Pakistan, the people here are statistically high in poverty and hunger, low in health and education. Yet in Matthieu Paley’s stunning photographs that comprise this simple and memorable film, we see joy and humanity from the impoverished inhabitants. Beauty and hardship walk hand in hand in this collage of photographs and sounds from a place forgotten on the roof of the world.
—EL