Chaotic scenes unfolded in Kabul when US withdraws from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban marched through the streets of the city and captured it without resistance. While the world watched in horror, desperate Afghans, who had suddenly lost their last hope of freedom, tried to flee the city to safety.
Amid this uproar, a nascent disorganized street protest movement was taking shape in Kabul. It was led by women who were on the receiving end of the brutal dictatorship of the Taliban, which curtailed women’s rights and freedoms.
Documentary by filmmaker Sara Mani bread and roses recently premiered Cannes Film Festival, captures this brief moment in history – an inspiring group of brave Afghan women marching against one of the most brutal regimes in modern history, seeking freedom from oppression. Carrying handmade placards and chanting “bread, work, education and freedom”, these women were the only resistance the Taliban faced in Kabul.
“The film captures the existential angst of Afghan women under Taliban rule.” , Photo credit: Cannes Film Festival
bread and roses Follows three activists who staged a protest, even though there was little hope of attaining freedom. Initially, women were not allowed access to universities and workplaces. As the regime’s stronghold over the Afghan people grew stronger, it clamped down on one of the last remaining freedoms by making it mandatory for women to be veiled in public and accompanied by a chaperone.
Produced by Jennifer Lawrence’s Excellent Cadaver Production, the documentary presents itself as an important artifact in describing this pivotal moment in the history of Afghanistan. His 2018 documentary, a thousand girls like me, Follows an Afghan woman’s fight for justice in a country’s unfair judicial system skewed against women.
Speaking on the sidelines of the film’s screening at the festival, Mani said that he has decided to take this bread and roses Mainly it was to tell the stories of these brave women. This meant that the crew were thrown into dangerous conditions, some even risking arrest, but the urgency was extra urgent as the existence of women under the Taliban’s religious rule was precarious. happened.
Mani, who is in exile, had traveled to Venice in 2021 for the film festival but could not return to Afghanistan after his condition worsened. The film was mostly shot in secret by activists during the Taliban takeover over the past two years, putting their lives at risk, and Mani claims that many women came forward with their stories for the project. Mani directed the film under extenuating circumstances and made it into the Cannes lineup as a last-minute entry to convince the organizers.
bread and roses Uses grainy mobile phone footage taken by activists. Photo credit: Cannes Film Festival
in an almost complete absence of hope, bread and roses Appeals to viewers to pay attention to the plight of Afghan women. Stitched together using mobile footage recorded by women protesters, the film takes viewers through muddy alleyways and streets where tear gas and water cannons run wild. Mani says she was inspired to call the film bread and roses After a political slogan by American poet James Oppenheim; It symbolizes the fight for basic rights and dignity.
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The lives of Zahra, a dentist who runs her own clinic, Sharifeha, a former Afghan government employee, and Tarannum, a women’s rights activist, form the backbone of the film. Zahra says in the film, “As a woman from a conservative family, I was given a good education and I never had to suffer.” She knew that Afghanistan was at a breaking point and that she needed to stand up for her fellow women.
Strong women are often alone, says Tarannum, as she records herself with her mobile phone from a safe house in rural Pakistan, where she lives with a few other women who have fled the Taliban. Even when Tarannum and the other women are given an ultimatum to leave the safehouse, one footage shows them celebrating the Afghan New Year, an attempt to find normalcy in poverty.
Even though she comes from a privileged background, dentist Dr Zahra Mahmoudi is the face of resilience Photo Credit: Cannes Film Festival
Shareef is a silent protestor whose family, especially her mother, is in the dark about their revolutionary daughter. She constantly records herself telling the camera that her parents would throw her out of the house if they found out she was part of the ongoing protests. She can no longer work in her office and protests in the street, rebelling against an oppressive regime, even facing brutal brutality.
bread and roses Tries to show tiny glimmers of hope amid growing gloom.
As she prepares to leave the country after being jailed and harassed by the Taliban, Zahra trains the staff at her dental clinic to care for patients in her absence. This hope ultimately proves to be short-lived as the film follows her story a few months later. Zahra’s empty clinic is derelict and derelict.
Mani claims that men are responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan and there should be an immediate intervention. She also warns the world against treating the Taliban with kid gloves. “To make peace with the Taliban is to condemn the women of Afghanistan,” she declared.
The film hits harder when it shows children, mostly Zahra’s nephews, denouncing the Taliban and demanding freedom as they chant slogans from the confines of their homes. “I wish it was all a bad dream,” one of them screams into the camera.
As the film unfolds as a chronicle of the lives of these women, it is a heart-wrenching realization that these little girls may remain confined to their homes as long as the Taliban are in power. And yet, it exemplifies the film’s theme of resilience in the face of harsh realities, even though the fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan has just begun.
Mani acknowledges that women’s lives have been forever changed under the Taliban dictatorship and that their everyday reality should not go unnoticed. “It is a brutal reality that we cannot ignore,” she added.