Afghan women defying the Taliban
Time|June 24, 2024
WHEN KABUL FELL TO THE TALIBAN, RETURNING Afghanistan to the fundamentalist group's control, women who did not flee faced a reality in which they could no longer be who they are: journalists deleted evidence of their work, artists destroyed their creations, and graduates set fire to their degrees.
YASMEEN SERHAN
Afghan women defying the Taliban

But some chose to fight back. Their defiance, and the dangers that have come with it, are vividly captured in Bread & Roses, a documentary that follows three women in real time as their lives become undone by the Taliban's return. There's Zahra Mohammadi, 33, a newly married dentist whose practice quickly transforms into a meeting space for fellow activists. There's Taranom Seyedi, 39, a women'srights activist who is forced into exile in neighboring Pakistan. And there's Sharifa Movahidzadeh, 31, a government employee who is confined to her home.

More than just a story about the brutality of the Taliban, Bread & Roses is "about the women's resistance in Afghanistan," says Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar-winning actor and a producer of the film. She spoke with TIME alongside award-winning Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who directed, and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, an executive producer. Ahead of its June 21 release on Apple TV+, the women explained how the project came together, the fate of its protagonists, and what impact they hope it will have on a world whose attention has been largely drawn elsewhere.

TIME: How did this project come together?

Sahra Mani: When the Taliban took over the country in 2021, we saw them impose a lot of restrictions on women's education, women's movement. We saw extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, illegal detention, and a lot of women disappearing. As a filmmaker, I was thinking, What can I do? It was my goal to make a film about this situation, and I was very lucky that Jennifer and [fellow producer] Justine [Ciarrocchi] wrote an email telling me that if I want to make a film, they would be happy to support the project.

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