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Malala Yousafzai and Jennifer Lawrence spoke to the BBC about their new documentary, “Bread and Roses,” which focuses on the stories and voices of Afghan women resisting the Taliban.
The United Nations calls it “gender apartheid.” In August 2021, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. A generation of women who had new opportunities to work, study, and hold public office under the previous regime found their lives turned upside down. Girls are denied formal secondary and university education, and women are barred from most work sectors, parks, and gyms. Hair salons were closed. Women’s voices are now even forbidden to speak in public. The Taliban insisted that the new laws are accepted in Afghan society and are in line with Islamic Sharia law.
Bread & Roses is a documentary film made by Afghan women who have resisted these restrictions on their lives. “Please don’t call me, I’m filming,” says Dr. Zahra Mohammadi, who calls in the film as she runs down the stairs to her workplace.
Dr. Mohammadi is a young dentist who celebrated her engagement just before the Taliban arrived in Kabul, a few weeks before the video was shot. She expressed to the audience her hope that she could continue her work under the new government. “So far the Taliban have not harassed doctors, they have just ordered me to remove my name from the signboard,” she told the camera.
It was important for us to get an insight into Kabul because that is exactly what the Taliban did not want – Jennifer Lawrence.
Dr. Mohammadi puts her clinic’s signboard back in a prominent place on the street, a sign of the courage she displays throughout the film. With the Taliban no longer providing secondary schools or colleges for girls, her dental clinic soon becomes a clandestine meeting place for activists. As the film progresses, women in the resistance face arrests, prison sentences, and disappearances.
“Bread & Roses” (the title is taken from a 20th-century women’s suffrage political slogan) was shot in the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashto without a narrator. It is primarily a Maushen-style documentary, where the protagonists film themselves. And they do this at demonstrations demanding “bread, education and freedom.” They film themselves being arrested during protests, being tear-gassed, the Taliban kicking down their doors, etc. “Girls who go to school up to grade 12 have to stay at home,” an elderly protester said of the situation. “They dreamed of becoming doctors, engineers, teachers. It’s tragic. They had dreams.”
The film is produced by expatriate Afghan filmmaker Sahara Mani (who also made the powerful 2018 documentary A Thousand Girls Like Me about the rape of Afghan girls), but Bread & Roses will be backed by Hollywood. Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence will be the producer, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, herself a former victim of Taliban gunfire, will be the executive producer.
Ms. Lawrence told the BBC that she was inspired to act after seeing the news following the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021 and what was happening to women there. “There was just an urgent need to do something,” she says. “And the camera helps counteract that feeling of helplessness.”
Ms. Lawrence said she wanted to know if anyone in the country was filming what was happening to Afghan women and girls. “It was important for us to get an insight into Kabul because that’s exactly what the Taliban didn’t want,” she says. “We reached out to Sahra, who we already knew through our work, and found out she was already collecting footage of the girls on location in Kabul.”
The women featured in the film were taught how to use the camera and how to avoid getting caught. “I spent time on the Afghan border getting close to the team and collecting material,” Mani told the BBC. “We formed a team to teach the protagonists how to film themselves and how to film safely, without giving away if their phones were in the hands of the Taliban.”
Giving women a voice
Lawrence is not the first well-known Hollywood star to denounce the human rights violations of Afghan women. In September, Meryl Streep declared at a United Nations General Assembly event that cats have more rights than women living in Afghanistan because they can go outside and “feel the sun on their faces.”
But Lawrence’s activism falls in line with other high-profile women named to documentaries focusing on the recent experiences of Afghan women: Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton were two of the producers of “In Her Hands,” a 2022 film about the youngest female mayor in Afghanistan’s history and the turmoil she experienced in the months before the Taliban took power.
I think filmmaking is a way for me to deal with life. It’s my artistic process and it’s how I process it too – Jennifer Lawrence.
The Clintons and Lawrence are also currently executive producing a local women’s rights documentary – Zulawski v. State of Texas (2024), a documentary about women who have abortions despite the risk to their lives. The situation was denied and they sued the state of Texas. While some women in the United States claim that their rights over their bodies are being eroded while others support more restrictive and stricter abortion policies, the question is whether Lawrence is using filmmaking for a good cause.
“I think filmmaking is a way for me to deal with life,” she replied. “It’s my artistic process and it’s how I process it.” And in many ways, when I see something and feel that helpless rage, that becomes my only weapon. It came at just the right time because Zulawski v. Abortion was on the [US ballot] in Texas.
“Women die because Roe v. Wade was impeached, and the dialogue around abortion in America is very tense,” Lawrence said. “There are so many differences in how Americans view abortion, so it was very important for me to speak out.
“Bread & Roses was born out of a need to just watch what was happening at that moment and just do something. I believe that for the women in Afghanistan, the act of filming was a way of communicating to cope.” Severe restrictions are being placed on their lives.
“Speaking out against the Taliban is a highly effective form of resistance for Afghan women, as they do everything in their power to silence them,” she told the BBC. “This is the systematic repression they’re imposing. They control everything in women’s lives.”
To resist them, you have to do everything they don’t want to do. Women need to be in these spaces. Women’s Rights Must Be on the Agenda – Malala Yousafzai
Malala points out that since the documentary was made, Afghan women have faced even greater challenges. Recent Taliban decrees have banned women from speaking in public. The Taliban claim this is based on their interpretation of Islamic law. You should not hear them singing or reciting in your own home. They must be covered in veils, including their faces, in public. A Taliban spokesman told the BBC at the time that the decree was in line with Islamic Sharia law and that “any religious scholar can verify their qualifications.” They also said they were “tackling” the issue of women’s education.
But a psychologist working with Afghan women told the BBC this year that they were suffering from a “pandemic” of suicidal thoughts. “If you’ve closed the universities and the schools, you’d better kill me now,” a woman shouts as a police officer says. “Shut up or I’ll kill you now,”
It’s not safe, it’s scary,” another woman shouts at them in the documentary.
Dr. Mohammadi states in the film that “Afghan women are first oppressed at home by their fathers, brothers, and husbands,” but a striking feature of Bread and Roses is the number of men and boys who support these women, and their faces show concern for their lives. Safety is almost ambiguous. As the camera focuses on a night shot of Kabul city, a woman’s voice can be heard shouting, “Education is our right!” and, moments later, a man’s voice can be heard joining in.
Malala tells the BBC she believes public strain can in the long run pressure the Taliban into concessions. “They don`t need ladies to also be in talks which might be occurring with exclusive countries’ representatives, they do now no longer need ladies’s rights to be at the agenda,” she says.
“To withstand them, we ought to do all that they do not need us to do. Women ought to be in the ones rooms. Women’s rights ought to be on the agenda, we’ve to name out gender apartheid and codify it into treaties so that perpetrators just like the Taliban are held liable for the crimes that they are committing towards Afghan ladies.”
Such needs might also additionally experience a ways off. The BBC mentioned this 12 months of female-led protests have stopped because of the reprisals, even though a few nevertheless put up motion pictures online with their faces covered. Sahra Mani says that with “protection as our primary priority” while making the movie, her primary protagonists left Afghanistan earlier than the movie was launched and their faces were shown.
Mobile telecellsmartphone footage, in a shifting epilogue to the movie, suggests an older female in hiding, coaching a set of younger ladies in English. “Now that is beneficial for college front exams,” the female says, as though nothing has changed.
The message of Bread & Roses is summed up inside the phrases of 1 activist who has to flee, taking a remaining have a take observe her domestic country.
“May records recollect that when upon a time, such cruelty became authorized towards the ladies of Afghanistan,” she says, as she crosses the border into Pakistan.
Bread & Roses is launched on Apple TV+ on fon22 November.
