A documentary film by award-winning journalist, photographer and filmmaker Lynzy Billing, Long Night tells the story of EMERGENCY’s 25 years of work in Afghanistan, through the intimate first-hand accounts of Afghan healthcare workers and their patients at our facilities across the country.
Join us in London on Thursday, 3 April, for the UK Premiere screening of Long Night.
WATCH THE OFFICIAL TRAILER
I always wanted to make this film to pay tribute to these Afghan doctors who have treated more than 8.5 million patients and saved thousands of lives during the war and continue to do so today. Their strength is unmatched, their care for their people unwavering. The work that EMERGENCY does in Afghanistan must not be forgotten. The people of Afghanistan must not be forgotten either.
I want to thank the staff of EMERGENCY for their constant dedication, and for their enduring care of the Afghan people. I warmly ask you to join our screenings of the film in 2025.”
Lynzy Billing, Director of Long Night
Afghanistan’s recent history is marred by decades of conflict. Today, the country remains devastated by the legacy of war, manifesting in some of the world’s highest rates of landmine contamination, poverty, and maternal mortality.
In 2024, Lynzy Billing – an Emmy Award-winning British journalist with Afghan-Pakistani origins – returned to the country to explore the conflict through the intimate first-hand accounts of Afghan healthcare workers and their patients. Staff working for the humanitarian non-profit EMERGENCY reflect on 25 years of providing free healthcare in Afghanistan, including hundreds of long nights responding to mass casualties during the most intense phases of fighting. Yet while the looming shadow of war leaves victims of landmines too young to remember a country without violence, a group of Afghan women continue to safely deliver thousands of babies with a determined hope for the next generation.
From the heart of Kabul to the rural Panjshir valley and the once-volatile Helmand province, generations of Afghans share the extraordinary story of how they continue to confront the reality of war, every day.
LYNZY BILLING
Lynzy Billing is a British investigative journalist, photographer and filmmaker of Afghan-Pakistani origins. She has reported on Afghanistan and Iraq since 2019.
In December 2022, Billing published “The Night Raids” a nearly four-year investigation into CIA-backed Afghan special forces and the civilian dead they left behind. The investigation won eight awards that year and was a finalist for ten more. In June 2023 her ProPublica short film “The Night Doctrine” in partnership with The New Yorker, based on the investigation, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. It went on to screen at 15 more film festivals, winning three awards including Best Documentary Short and Best Animation Short and three Emmy Awards.
EMERGENCY
EMERGENCY is an international humanitarian NGO that provides free, high-quality medical treatment to victims of war and poverty. Present in Afghanistan since 1999, it has treated over 8.5 million people in the country.
Today, EMERGENCY operates Surgical Centres in Kabul and Lashkar-Gah, a Surgical & Paediatric Centre and a Maternity Centre in Anabah (Panjshir valley), and a network of more than 40 First Aid Posts and Primary Healthcare Centres.