Afghan filmmaker at Paris protest against Taliban

As a filmmaker, Shahrbanoo Sadat watched with fascination as Taliban fighters took over her city, and terrified crowds filled the streets.

But as an Afghan woman, she also watched the scene through another prism, and knew the moment had come: it was time to flee.

Relieved, angered and saddened after her family's harrowing escape from Kabul, Sadat is now warning world governments.

"I think the entire world is going to regret this later in the future," she said, speaking about the prospect of foreign governments recognising the Taliban.

She feels Western governments aren't doing enough to defend these things in Afghanistan.

Sadat, whose first film "Wolf and Sheep" won an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and nine family members were among thousands of Afghans brought out by foreign governments before the U.S. military pullout last week.

"I was in the street with 500 people, scared and horrified, running in different directions, and at that moment I saw Taliban raising flags," she said.

"I said to myself, this couldn't be real."

She activated every international connection she had to get permissions to leave, then spent 72 hours in line at the Kabul airport, fighting to get out.

The first night, she said Afghan troops were aggressive, shooting from 6pm until 10am.

So the family tried another gate, waiting in line for hours.

Taliban forces pulled out the corpses of 11 people who had been crushed to death in the desperate crowd, she said.

Once in France, she was taken to an abandoned building in a Paris suburb that the government hastily converted into temporary shelter for those fleeing Afghanistan.

Sadat joined a protest Sunday by aid groups and others demanding that western governments do more to help those left behind and put pressure on the Taliban.

Some Afghans who have been struggling for years to get asylum joined the demonstration, along with those who have recently arrived.

Sadat is worried about relatives who stayed behind.

And about one of her actors who stayed in his native Panjshir province to try to defend Afghanistan's last remaining pocket of resistance to the Taliban, which stepped up its assault on the region Sunday.

The Taliban have sought to recast themselves as different from when they ruled in the 1990s and denied women and girls work and education and banned television and music.

But many are skeptical that will hold true.

Sadat said differences were already palpable before she left.

She described a vendor refusing to sell her ice cream on the street because Taliban fighters stood nearby – themselves enjoying the same ice cream she was denied.

Once her quarantine is up, she plans to join her sister and partner in Germany, and revive work on her latest film, a romantic comedy.

"The international community, they left Afghanistan alone in the 1990s and Afghanistan become the home of terrorists and this will happen again," she said.