The U.S. and British intervention in the Middle East and Afghanistan has been depicted in numerous books and films in the English language, accompanied by a certain visual language and aesthetic, narrative shorthand, forming an entirely new genre around the experiences of American and British soldiers in the countries they have invaded. Within this genre, war is depicted as a computer game and aestheticization takes away the "real" sense of lives being lost at war. Clement Cogitore's French film "Ni le Ciel Ni la Terre" (Neither the Sky nor the Earth) and titled "Wakhan Front" in English, by virtue of being filmed in French, shatters conventions and enables the viewer to look at Afghanistan from a different perspective. Jolting us back into reality with the French language which is juxtaposed with the arid landscapes of Afghanistan, the film proceeds to transcend reality and enter the realm of poetry -- and a mystical one, at that.In the barren mountainside which looks no different than images of Mars, a group of French soldiers stand at a surveillance post, supposedly in the Wakhan Corridor (it was filmed in Morocco). After a few of the classic "war film" sequences we know from the Anglo-Saxon film industry, the story focuses on an Afghan villager who breaches the "border" between the village and surveillance territory determined and circumscribed by NATO. Thus, from the start we understand that the film will be about trespassingborders: those that are visible and invisible, tangible and intangible, earthly and ethereal. After being shooed away by soldiers who aim a volley of shots at the villager, Captain Bonasssieu's dog disappears and the narrative line begins to follow the Cave Dwellers, or the Seven Sleepers, based on the well-known Quranic and Biblical story.Those well-versed in the Quran can see where the film is headed once the French soldiers begin to disappear and viewers are ushered into an Afghani twilight zone. The viewer's sense of being in this twilight zone is heightened by scenes which are filmed through the lense of black-and-green night goggles, from the perspective of the soldiers looking through their visors. In a way, the French soldiers are "out there," already in a twilight zone, seeing things not as they are but through the manipulated images from binoculars, drones and video recordings. The only "rational"explanation of the disappearances is that the Taliban has kidnapped the soldiers, even though the video recordings indicate no enemy presence but merely disappearance of the French soldiers while they are sleeping.The mystery reaches its crescendo when the French learn that Taliban soldiers have also been disappearing, forcing the two sides to make a truce to solve the mystery. There are, of course, different camps in the French compound as to how to go about looking for the soldiers. Are they to accept that there is something "supernatural" involved? Should the remaining soldiers leave the compound before more of them disappear? Is it wise to make an alliance with their own enemy on a mission that is very unlikely to yield results? The alienation of the soldiers from their surroundings, the difficulty they have understanding the ways of the villagers, and indeed, the Mars-resembling territory they find themselves in puts us very much into an"Apocalypse Now" atmosphere -- so much so that when a helicopter approaches the compound with all its noise and blowing up dust, the viewer nearly finds himself/herself expecting a group of cheerleaders to appear and boost the morale of the soldiers. Instead, the screen is filled with the expanse of a big black priest, sent by headquarters to alleviate the fears of the believing men among the soldiers.The clues to the mystery are given by the people of a nearby village after they have been manhandled by the French for "harboring the Taliban." It turns out that the Taliban with their fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran, as well as the French with their enlightenment-inspired values, have got to come to terms with the fact that they have been fighting in an "enchanted" area - an area that refuses to "give up the ghost." The extraterrestrial ambiance of the terrain is well matched by the measured disquiet of the actor playing the Captain, Jeremie Renier, who means to get to the bottom of the mystery using rational methods. In the end, even he has to capitulate the narrative offered by the villagers and accept that they have trespassed on a charmed space that the villagers have learned to respect through generations.After much negotiation and slow revelations, the final section comes with the French soldiers and the Taliban locating "the third space" where their missing ought to be. We get a rare depiction of the Islamic tayammum ablutions (religious washing done with sand or earth) on the big screen as the Afghan translator with the French army kneels down and rubs his forearms with sand. As the Taliban watch and the French soldiers try to locate a cave underground, he is preparing to read a part of the Quran to the captain. Yes, you guessed it right, it's Surah Kahf, talking about men, "some say three, some say five, some say seven, but only knows their number." The men go into a cave fleeing religious oppression, fall asleep, and wake up several hundred years later. It is when the chapter or "surah" mentions a dog who has slept with them that the captain pricks up his ears, and is forced to give the text due attention. While the Taliban already believes in the sacredness of the text and its final verdict of where the lost men now are, the French soldiers are at least spooked by it and decide to abandon the search.There is great pathos in how the captain does not give up and, seeing that he can't find the bodies of the soldiers that have been entrusted to him, tries at least to go where they have. His attempts at "disappearing" are quite poignant - he tries to breach that wall of the "third space" - and fails miserably. The remaining soldiers rescue him and take him to the village battered and bruised where just a few days earlier he had been shouting orders at the villagers. There is, then, the obligatory Sufi seance scene which he observes now with milder disbelief. Cogitore perfectly mirrors that scene with another ritual back at the camp with a bonfire, bottles of beer, and one of the French soldiers dancing in a "European" (as opposed to oriental) sort of trance.The film ends with the captain trying to contain the "madness" they have experienced. He makes up a story for the benefit of the families waiting to hear from the lost soldiers and even finds an ingenious way of providing bodies sealed in body bags. While those back in France will have a sense of closure, the audience is invited to form its own conclusive explanation. But I think, more importantly, that Cogitore places the soldiers in our imagination as heralds for the future.When these French and Taliban soldiers return some hundred years later, will they find Afghanistan a changed place, hopefully, for the better?