Comprised of videos shot by women in Kabul on their cell phones, the film reveals Afghanistan’s fierce resistance to the Taliban’s brutal gender apartheid ordinance, largely unknown to the outside world.
In her new documentary Bread & Roses, filmmaker Safra Mani reveals the fierce and courageous resistance of Afghan women to the Taliban’s efforts to wipe them out.
In the summer of 2021, Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani headed to film festivals in Europe. Traveling has become a normal part of her life since she made the amazing documentary A Thousand Girls Like Me three years ago.
The film follows a courageous young Afghan woman who attempts to bring her father to justice for years of sexual abuse. Already the mother of two babies born from incest, she refused to remain silent any longer. She said only justice could protect her daughter from such horrors.
Mani told her that this was a shocking topic in Afghanistan. The film was not allowed to be shown in Tunisia or other countries. …Isn’t it great that a woman from Afghanistan can make a movie that scares other governments?”
As expected, it also embarrassed the Afghan government, but she added that “young women activists … applauded me for speaking about the forbidden.”
That Mani was able to make such a bold documentary in 2018 reflects what was possible for a new generation of Afghan women and girls who came of age after 9/11 and the fall of the early Taliban regime. . They were educated. They were elected to parliament and had all kinds of jobs: journalists, musicians, lawyers, midwives. They expected to interact in public spaces and build their own futures.
“It was packed with light,” Mani recalls of a trip to a film festival. She never expected to be stranded on a short trip abroad after the shocking fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021.
“A tragedy happened overnight,” Mani says. “And we all lost everything we had.”
Mani had embraced her life and work in Afghanistan so strongly that she included a clause in her marriage contract stating that her husband could never take her away. But suddenly, being in her beloved country became dangerous. She was the focus of the Taliban’s attention.
The filmmaker was in exile but found his way back to Afghanistan through videos shot by women living under Taliban rule. These videos are the centerpiece of her stunning new film Bread & Roses, currently streaming on Apple TV+. These videos, shot by women with their own cellphones at great risk, reveal a fierce resistance largely unknown to the outside world.
Refusing to be erased, these young women stand up to the Taliban in horrifying scenes where protesters are tear-gassed, cornered and beaten in the streets. These videos also defy the Taliban in another way, through scenes documenting intimate moments in homes to which the Taliban has restricted access. She complains about being bored, dresses up and laughs, and quietly teaches her mother how to read.
“I think resistance and hope play an important role in the lives of Afghan women,” Mani says. “They clearly know that the only option left to them…is to fight back.”
But even Mani was surprised by the courage shown when she started receiving videos from Afghan women while working with charities abroad. She collected them as valuable evidence of a horrific history that should be remembered. Until one day, she received a surprising invitation. Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Lawrence’s production company, Excellent Cadaver, approached Mani about making the film, along with fellow executive producer Justin Ciarrocchi. It’s a documentary by Afghan women, about Afghan women, at a time when the world had stopped looking at Afghan women.
Producing a documentary like this outside of the country was obviously a challenge. Mani had great raw video and tons of archival tapes. But she and her crew continued to train several activists in the art of capturing their lives and daily struggles. (Also, importantly, how do you remove these dangerous videos after you send them to the filmmakers?)
It is no coincidence that these activists are all young women. Their determination and spirit, their anger at having their rights taken away, their courage all stemmed from a lifetime of experiencing a new kind of freedom.
“I focus on modern women of my generation,” says Mani. “You’ve seen women in burqas on the Afghan news. The reality (of) Afghanistan was not that. The reality of Afghanistan was us. … We were very different from our mothers. ” Her mother’s generation was very conservative, Mani explains. We don’t want to follow that role. We will find our role…through social media…Netflix, Apple TV…linked to the free world by the internet. ”
There are no burkas worn by the three women in “Bread & Roses.”
Taranom eschews veils and wears a collection of fashionable caps that never cover her face. Taranom, unheard of in Afghanistan, lived alone in an artistic apartment in Kabul. She was a social activist who supported poor children forced to work on the streets. In the film, she tries to escape but finds herself stranded in a dusty town across the border in Pakistan, alone, lost, and filled with regret.
Sharifa is there. She is from the Hazara tribe. The Hazara people have been marginalized and brutalized, but in recent years they have finally reached the peak of prosperity. Sharifa was pursuing a promising career working in the government. Forced to give up the job she loves, Sharifa finds herself overwhelmed by boredom as her world is reduced to a home with her parents, but she ends up joining the resistance.
And then there’s Zahara. She became a dentist in defiance of her conservative family. She proudly holds up a sign advertising her work and is happy with her fiancé who supports her and her profession. But Zahra became increasingly involved in organizing and leading protests against the Taliban, at the cost of her dental practice and almost her life.
It was in the waiting room of a Zahra dental clinic that women gathered in a scene that left American feminist activists heart-wrenching. A dozen women, holding pens and large pieces of paper that will soon become placards, consult each other on how to frame their requests for bread. Education, work, and freedom.
Another scene is surprising. A protest organizer taunts detainees before being forced into a car. “Then come and kill me,” she screamed, then repeated “Then kill me” over and over again, trying to silence the Taliban police. All the while, she balances her phone on her lap and records everything.
“She was really brave,” Mani says. “They didn’t go to the street to film (themselves). They went there to demand their rights. But at the same time, they were smart enough to capture the moment. Because she wants to show the world how cruel the Taliban are. But I believe that the moment she started filming, she was more focused on arguing with the Taliban guy!”
The scene in which the girls embrace their activist aunt after she returns from a Taliban prison is heart-wrenching and moving. At first they cry inconsolably. And they change. Staring straight into the camera, as if understanding the world they, too, have lost, these small, fierce rebels begin to protest loudly, demanding rights they may never know. .
Recorded over many months, Bread & Roses is filled with moments of tenderness, hilarity, and even beauty. But we will never forget how brutal the Taliban are. Still, Mani admits that her film’s reliance on videos submitted by women about their lives limits its ability to depict the atrocities happening across the country. know.
“There were so many women. They were kidnapped by the Taliban and disappeared,” Mani said. “Some of these women and their families have had their bodies found in other parts of the city, and some are still (missing).
“This movie is just a part of reality,” she continues. “But the reality itself is much harsher and even more difficult to think about. This is not just an issue for women… they are not allowed to go to work or receive an education. …They were killed because they were demanding their basic rights. They faced extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, arrests, and torture.”
And even if they emerge alive, they risk being stigmatized and ostracized from their families and communities, Mani added. They were arrested by the Taliban. ”
Everyone involved in making Bread & Roses says they want the world to see something incredible. As filming progressed, another famous name, Malala Yousafzai, emerged as an executive producer. She gained international attention when she was a high school girl in Pakistan. Known as Malala, she spoke out about girls’ right to education after the Taliban took over her town and forced girls to leave school. As punishment, Taliban members attacked her and shot her in the face.
Ms. Yousafzai’s passionate fight for women’s rights and her Noble Peace Prize give her unique credibility to champion this documentary. She hopes the film will inspire people to keep the focus on Afghanistan, donate money, support activists outside Afghanistan who are raising their voices at the United Nations and elsewhere, and support Afghan women and girls. He said he hopes to put pressure on public representatives to connect with others online and share their stories.
Mani wants more than that. “Afghan women activists are fighting to convince the international community to recognize gender apartheid in Afghanistan, and the Taliban should be held accountable for the crimes they commit against Afghan women,” she says. . “They should pay.”
The Taliban have imposed nearly 100 rules governing what women can and cannot do, beyond restrictions on work and education. It prohibited women from owning bakeries, getting driver’s licenses, laughing in public, or speaking loudly enough for others to hear.
“Taliban restrictions are never-ending,” Mani said. “You can’t go out without someone, you can’t take a taxi, you can’t go to a public event, you can’t go to the park, you can’t go to the hairdresser, you can’t go to your mother’s house, etc. Now a woman can’t go outside the door without another woman. I can’t sing for you!”
Even by the standards of what the Taliban has done in the past, the list is dizzying.
“It’s a never-ending restriction, and it’s something you don’t get from a normal person,” Mani says. “I think there is a dangerous madness behind all these restrictions that we have to take seriously.”
Months before Afghanistan’s democratic government collapsed, a prominent Afghan women’s rights activist predicted peace would come if the long war ended and the Taliban returned to power. But the country’s 20 million women and girls will live in “peaceful prisons.”
It happened. And the Taliban are discovering more and more bizarre ways to make women disappear every day.
Support our sisters in Afghanistan: Join the Feminist Majority Foundation’s (publisher of Ms.) campaign to demand that the United Nations recognize gender apartheid as an international crime at stopgenderapartheid.org.
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Ms., on newsstands February 12th. Join the Ms. Community today and get the issue delivered straight to your inbox.
