By far the youngest of the 20 directors competing for Cannes' coveted Palme d'Or, Makhmalbaf's almost documentary film was shot in the last months of 2002 as a million refugees poured into the devastated land, to find their homes in ruins and little to eat or drink.

"I wanted to show reality, not the cliches on television saying that the US went to Afghanistan and rescued the people from the Taliban, that the US did a Rambo," she said at a news conference on the film.

"When I went there it just wasn't like that."

Shot with residents of Kabul playing the lead and minor roles, Makhmalbaf's "At Five in the Afternoon" is the first feature made after the fall of the Taliban and won a rare round of applause from critics at its Cannes debut.

It centres on the plight of women, but the failure of the West to alleviate the country's misery stands out like a sore.

As the occasional helicopter or fighter plane passes overhead, the film follows the footsteps of Nogreh, a young independent-minded woman of 23 -- the same age as the director -- and her fundamentalist father, who cannot bear to see a woman's face unveiled.

"Though the Taliban have gone, their ideas are anchored in peoples' minds, in their traditions and culture," said the Iranian director, who won a special prize at Cannes in 2000 for "Blackboards" and is the daughter of top Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

As Nogreh, wrapped in an all-covering blue burqa veil, slips off to school in secret wearing high-heeled shoes and begins to nurture a dream of one day becoming president, her father finds the irreligious "blasphemy" of Kabul too much to bear.

With his son reported dead in a landmine blast, and his daughter-in-law struggling to keep a newborn alive, the old man orders the women to exit the city. So off they go, finding it more difficult by the day to exist as their trail leads further and further into the wildnerness.

"There is still a big difference between men and women in Afghanistan," said Makhmalbaf, who based her dialogues on real speech overheard in the street and took inspiration from chance encounters. "The idea of the Taliban is still alive."

"But women are fighting," she said. "In their schools they want to change."

Asked whether it was harder for a woman to be president of Iran, or a film-maker, she said "Harder to be president."

And would she like to be president of Iran?

"No! Too many problems. I'd feel too much responsibility and I wouldn't be able to do anything," she said.

Afghanistan will make movie history here with a debut feature at the Cannes film festival's Director's Fortnight -- Sedigh Barmak's "Osama", which is also about women but this time under the Taliban.