Lifestyle
How do you make a film about Afghan women protesters without being in Afghanistan?
Sharifa Movahidzadeh is one of the three protesters profiled in Bread & Roses, the documentary film about Taliban policies that restrict the rights of women. The film is now streaming on Apple TV+.
Apple TV+/Apple TV
hide caption
toggle caption
Apple TV+/Apple TV
How do you make a documentary when you can’t film in person — and even hiring a cameraperson is risky?
That was the challenge for the award-winning Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who left the country after the Taliban takeover. Her new documentary, Bread & Roses, takes the viewers into the heart of the women’s resistance in Afghanistan.
Using a mosaic of cell phone footage stitched together with video from Mani’s archives, the film tells the story of the women who are protesting the Taliban’s erasure of women from political and public life. It follows the lives of three activists as they navigate a changing country where they are rapidly losing hard-earned rights and freedoms.
With a mosaic of cellphone footage, videos from Mani’s archives and clips from camerapersons hired to follow the protestors, the film tells the story of the women who are protesting the Taliban’s erasure of women from political and public life. It follows the lives of three activists as they navigate a changing country where they are rapidly losing hard-earned rights and freedoms.
The title, Bread & Roses, is inspired by the protestors’ slogan — Naan, Kar, Azaadi (Bread, Work, Freedom) — and also echoes a phrase used by the early women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The film began streaming on Apple TV+ in November.
Since the Taliban came to power in August 2021, they have imposed a series of restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms, including bans on higher education, employment in various sectors and public and political participation. Women are also banned from visiting public baths or parks or traveling long distances without a male guardian.
Despite the restrictions, women in Afghanistan have continued to protest the Taliban and are part of the only civil resistance left in the country. The consequences of such opposition can be dangerous; many women activists have been detained in Taliban prisons where they have reportedly faced torture, abuse and even rape.
Sahra Mani is an Afghan filmmaker best known for her documentary A Thousand Girls Like Me, about women survivors of sexual abuse in Afghanistan, released in 2018 and received the Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award the next year. Mani lived and worked in Kabul prior to the Taliban takeover in 2021 and was a lecturer at Kabul University.
The team behind Bread & Roses: From left, executive producer Malala Yousafzai, producers Jennifer Lawrence and Justine Ciarocchi, and director/producer Sahra Mani at the November premiere of the documentary film about Afghan women.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/Invision
hide caption
toggle caption
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/Invision
Three years on, the Taliban’s atrocities against Afghan women seem to have slipped out of international headlines. Mani hopes to highlight these activists and their resistance in her movie, she tells NPR. (The three main subjects have all since left the country.)
“It would be a serious mistake to forget the Afghan women or ignore the Taliban’s atrocities,” she says. “Remember that September 11 attacks were planned in this region, involved this very group. So to join the Afghan women’s resistance is part of everyone’s responsibility for the sake of our collective futures.
Mani spoke to NPR about the film. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When was the idea for this movie born?
When I lived in Afghanistan [from birth until the Taliban takeover] , women were visible everywhere — you saw them in the media, on international platforms, in politics, in the parliament representing our people. They worked closely with [the President].
When Kabul fell [to the Taliban in August 2021], I saw women taking charge of the protests, chanting for education, rights to work, resisting the Taliban’s dictatorship. I was very amazed with the bravery of these women. I asked myself where had they been all these years. These were the common women of Afghanistan — young, educated girls and women representing the country. I was so happy to see them and quickly reached out to talk to them.
[During the Taliban takeover] I was working with a charity helping Afghan women at risk. Many of the women were sole breadwinners of their families and had lost their jobs and their rights because of the Taliban. So through the charity, I got to know many women, wonderful brave women, and sometimes they would send me [phone camera] videos of their daily life, their challenges and even their fights with the Taliban.
In one video, a group of women shout their slogan “Bread, work, freedom” as they face off with an armed Taliban fighter as he points his weapon at them. In another video, a group of masked women filmed themselves spraying anti-Taliban graffiti on the streets in Kabul in the middle of the night.
I started archiving these videos. Initially, I wasn’t planning on making a film. The idea was simply to preserve evidence of women’s movement in Afghanistan. But then I was approached by Jennifer Lawrence’s team and we decided that the world needs to see these videos and the strength of the women of Afghanistan.
Was it difficult to get women to participate in the documentary?
On the contrary, they were already filming themselves and had been sharing their experiences with me. They want the world to see what it is like to live under a dictatorship that prevents you from doing basic things, like going to school, working or even taking a taxi.
Later when we started working on the documentary, we found camerapersons inside Kabul and trained them how to safely film [the women protestors].
How did you put the movie together?
Nowadays, documentary filmmaking allows for a lot of opportunities and different ways to tell your story. We used cell phone videos, images with voiceovers as well as materials from my archives from during my time as a filmmaker in Kabul.
The cellphone videos are not always of very good quality, but we found them to be indispensable to the storytelling. [They] provide authenticity. We complemented them with the archival videos.
During the last Taliban rule in the 1990s, every so often a video of the Taliban’s mistreatment of women — including public executions — would get leaked, shocking the world. Now there is a lot more coverage of the situation inside Afghanistan. How does your movie add to our knowledge of the situation.
This movie is documentary evidence of what is happening, the historical changes, inside Afghanistan.
It was only when Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai showed willingness to support me as a filmmaker that it made me realize that it could be a more ambitious project. It became more and more urgent to me to help raise voices of the women of Afghanistan, bring them to the larger global platform.
What do you hope will be the impact of this film?
When people watch this film, I want them to be able to feel the experiences of the Afghan women, not only the anger and challenges but also their joys when they help each other or their celebration of the achievement.
As a filmmaker I have tried to use the tool of cinema to bring these stories forward with the hopes that people can connect with the emotions and experiences of these women and express solidarity. I hope the viewer can see and feel the experiences of living under the dictatorship of Taliban, enough for them to want to do something about, take action, reach out to their local governments and pressure them to recognize gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
I want people to join Afghan women in pressuring the United Nations to hold the Taliban accountable for the crime they have done on Afghan women and Afghan people.
Dr. Zahra Mohammadi, a dentist in Afghanistan, is profiled in the new documentary Bread & Roses. She has since left the country.
Apple TV+
hide caption
toggle caption
Apple TV+
What’s the biggest single loss for women?
Afghan women lost so much in the Taliban’s takeover. From the identities they built as professionals, educators, politicians et cetera to their very basic rights as humans, to learn, to sing, to talk to other women, to even exist in many spaces. They are continually losing their rights.
As you probably know there are close to 100 edicts that the Taliban have imposed on just women’s rights. This is not normal. This is terrorism, and it should be accepted by anyone as a normal way of life.
Will the movie be screened, discreetly of course, inside Afghanistan?
There is a possibility. It’s the choice of my distributor, but at the moment Apple TV+ has provided it in 100 countries. So that’s an important step. I also have several [online] workshops and training with Afghan students, Afghan girls and I will talk to them about the film. I would certainly want them to see it, too. Because I don’t look at this only as a movie. To me, this is an extension of the Afghan women’s movement.
Is there one scene that is particularly meaningful to you?
There are so many special and emotional moments, but I remember this one clip when the Taliban used tear gas on the women protestors in the streets. They started shouting and running. The camera follows the women as they try to get away, but [the camera] is upturned [when the camera operator was running] and you see the trees of Kabul. For a moment, all you see are the trees as you hear women shouting and crying.
For me, that represented that even the trees were crying in solidarity with the women. It was very emotional for me personally, as someone from Kabul, that even nature weeps with our women.
Ruchi Kumar is a journalist who reports on conflict, politics, development and culture in India and Afghanistan. She tweets at @RuchiKumarRuchi Kumar is a journalist who reports on conflict, politics, development and culture in India and Afghanistan. She tweets at @RuchiKumar
Britney Spears
Open to Treatment Plan After DUI Arrest, Source Says
Published
Britney Spears‘ team is hoping the judge mandates treatment for the pop star over jail time following her Wednesday DUI arrest … and Britney isn’t fighting them on that, TMZ has learned.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … Britney is willing to comply with a treatment and support plan.
We’re told her team is in the early stages of developing a plan and they’re exploring multiple options, including mental health services, detox, and dual-diagnosis programs.
It’s unclear whether she would do inpatient or outpatient treatment, and it’s also unclear whether she would enter treatment before her May 4 court date.
Broadcastify.com
We broke the story … Britney was pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers around 9:30 PM Wednesday in Westlake Village, CA, not far from her home. She was later taken to a hospital — not for any injuries, because we’re told she didn’t sustain any — but to draw her blood to determine her blood alcohol content.
According to CHP, she was arrested for “driving under the influence of a combination of drugs and alcohol.”
Sources familiar with the investigation told us an unknown substance was found in Britney’s car, which was sent to be tested.
Britney’s manager, Cade Hudson, previously told TMZ … “This was an unfortunate and inexcusable incident. Britney will take the right steps, comply with the law, and we hope this marks the start of long-overdue change in her life. She needs help and support during this difficult time. Her boys will be spending time with her, and her loved ones are putting a plan in place to set her up for success and well-being.”
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners.
Warner Bros. Pictures
hide caption
toggle caption
Warner Bros. Pictures
Ryan Coogler’s supernatural horror stars Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint in Mississippi. Opening night does not go as planned when vampires appear outside. “In a straightforward metaphor for all the ways Black culture has been co-opted by whiteness, the raucous pleasures and sonic beauty of the juke joint attract the interest of a trio of demons … they wish to literally leech off of the talents and energy of Black folks,” writes critic Aisha Harris. The film made history with a record 16 Academy Award nominations.
We asked our NPR audience: What movie would you recommend to someone who loved Sinners? Here’s what you told us:
Near Dark (1987)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow; starring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
If you want another cool vampire movie with Western kind of vibes, check out Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark — super underseen and kind of hard to find, but really gritty and sexy and another very different take on what you might think is a genre that had been wrung dry. – Maggie Grossman, Chicago, Ill.
30 Days of Night (2007)
Directed by David Slade; starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston
It follows a group of people in a small Alaskan town as they struggle to survive an invasion of vampires who have taken advantage of the month-long absence of the sun. Both this and Sinners revolve around a vampire takeover and the people’s fight to outlast the “night.” – Nathan Strzelewicz, DeWitt, Mich.
The Wailing (2016)
Directed by Na Hong-jin; starring Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Chun Woo-hee, Jun Kunimura
In this South Korean supernatural horror film, a mysterious illness causes people in a quiet rural village to become violent and murderous. A local police officer investigates while trying to save his daughter, who begins showing the same disturbing symptoms. The film blends folk horror, religion, and psychological dread, exploring themes of faith, evil, and moral weakness. Like Sinners, it centers on a supernatural force corrupting a close-knit community, builds slow-burning tension, and examines spiritual conflict and human frailty. – Amy Merke, Bronx, N.Y.
Fréwaka (2024)
Directed by Aislinn Clarke; starring Bríd Ní Neachtain, Clare Monnelly, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya
In this Irish folk horror film, a home care worker, Shoo, is assigned to stay with an elderly woman who’s convinced she’s under siege by malevolent fairies. Like Sinners, Fréwaka blends folk traditions and social commentary with horror. The social failures Shoo copes with (untreated mental health issues, religious abuse) are just as frightening as the supernatural forces. – Kerrin Smith, Baltimore, Md.
And a bonus pick from our critic:
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
Directed by George C. Wolfe; starring Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman
This is an adaptation of August Wilson’s play about a legendary blues singer (Viola Davis) muscling through a recording session with white producers who want to control her music. Chadwick Boseman’s blistering in his final role. – Bob Mondello, NPR movie critic
Carly Rubin and Ivy Buck contributed to this project. It was edited by Clare Lombardo.
The tiny town of West Goshen, Calif., was exactly the kind of place that community solar was designed for.
Near Visalia, most of its 500 residents live in mobile homes, where companies won’t install rooftop panels without a solid foundation. And until recently, they used propane for heating and cooking, with price fluctuations in the winter posing hardships for low-income families.
Community solar, in which residents get a discount on their bills for subscribing as a group to small solar arrays nearby, was designed to help low-income residents, apartment dwellers, renters and others who can’t put panels on their own roofs.
Over the last 11 years, New York, Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts and other states have built thriving community solar programs. But California has built, at most, only 34 projects since 2015, and experts say that’s a generous accounting.
“We’ve had community solar for a dozen years, and it simply has not produced anything of scale and anything of note,” said Derek Chernow, director of Californians for Local, Affordable Solar and Storage, a developer trade group that’s pushing to get a more robust program off the ground. “Projects don’t pencil out.”
The West Goshen residents were among the lucky few, becoming part of a community solar project in 2024.
“It has kind of allowed us to kind of breathe a little bit,” said resident and community organizer Melinda Metheney. Her bill has dropped by about $300 in the summer months, thanks to the 20% community solar discount, stacked with other low-income discounts and clean energy incentives, she said.
West Goshen’s panels sit about 10 miles out of town, in a field surrounded by farms. Energy and climate experts agree California must add much more clean energy to its grid, some 6 gigawatts by 2032, the California Public Utilities Commission said in a new plan last week.
Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), who in 2022 authored a bill to create a more effective community solar program, said the state needs to double its annual solar installation rate to reach that goal and is not on track to do that using only large utility-scale solar farms and individual rooftop arrays.
“We need mid-scale community solar,” he said.
Energy and climate experts agree California must add much more clean energy to its grid, some 6 gigawatts by 2032, the California Public Utilities Commission said in a new plan last week. Above, solar panels at Extra Space Storage in Pico Rivera.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
He and a coalition of environmental groups, solar developers and the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, worked to put his 2022 law into effect. They coalesced around requiring utilities to pay community solar developers and customers for the electricity they feed to the grid using the same formula they use for people who install rooftop solar.
But in May 2024, the California Public Utilities Commission decided to go with a late-in-the-game proposal backed by the state’s investor-owned utilities to pay community solar at a lower rate.
The agency, along with its public advocate’s office, argued that crediting solar developers at the higher rate would raise bills for customers who don’t have solar, who would still have to shoulder the cost of grid maintenance. It’s similar to the argument they’ve made to cut incentives for rooftop solar.
The new program relied on federal money, including the Biden administration’s Solar for All, to sweeten the deal for developers. But the utilities commission spent very little of the $250 million available under that grant before the Trump administration tried to claw it back last summer, and now it is held up in litigation.
At a legislative oversight hearing last week, Kerry Fleisher, the commission’s director of distributed energy resources, blamed the loss for the new program’s failure to launch.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of uncertainty in terms of the Solar for All funding that was intended to supplement this program,” Fleisher said. “That’s part of the reason why this has taken longer than normal.” She said the commission still plans to release a program in the next several months.
Ward, the San Diego lawmaker who wrote the community solar bill, called the program “fatally flawed” in an interview.
He’s now considering a bill to bring the community solar program more in line with what he initially envisioned — higher incentives, requirements for battery storage, and compliance with state law that mandates new houses be built with solar.
A study last year funded by a solar trade group found that could save California’s electric system $6.5 billion over 20 years. But Ward’s effort to revive his program last year failed to pass the Assembly appropriations committee.
“All the other states in our country that have adopted similar community solar program models, they are working,” said Ward, adding that 22 states have programs comparable to the one solar advocates want in California. “The writing on the wall suggests that, exactly as we feared years ago, this was not the way to go.”
California Public Utilities Commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper called California “a leader in cost-effective, least-cost solar deployment overall compared to any other state,” in an emailed statement.
Under the commission’s definition, the state has brought on 34 projects, representing 235 megawatts of community solar. But studies from groups such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Wood Mackenzie use different definitions for community solar, and they show California far behind at least 10 other states.
Meanwhile, advocates and developers involved in successful community solar projects in California say they were difficult to get off the ground.
Homes in the Avocado Heights area of Los Angeles County are part of a community solar project.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
One that came online in May in the unincorporated communities of Bassett and Avocado Heights in the San Gabriel Valley provides solar electricity to about 400 low-income residents. They get 20% discounts on their electric bills for subscribing to panels installed on two Extra Space Storage building rooftops in Pico Rivera.
Organizers said it took nearly five years to find the right location and comply with utility requirements. They also got a grant in addition to funding provided by the state utilities commission’s solar program.
It “would not have happened if it hadn’t been for the grant,” said Genaro Bugarin, a director at the Energy Coalition nonprofit that proposed and coordinated the project.
Brandon Smithwood, vice president of policy at Dimension Energy, the developer for the project in West Goshen, said he still hopes to see a community solar program in California that compensates projects for the way they help out the grid.
“We’ve seen it can work, and we know what we have won’t work,” Smithwood said at the hearing.
$163K in fake medical bill charges; AI uncovers it for you
After Warner Bros. merger, changes are coming to the historic Paramount lot. Here’s what to expect
Commentary: As ‘The Pitt’ suffers a digital meltdown, a human with analog experience saves the day
Britney Spears Open to Treatment Plan as Team Weighs Options
Anxiety grows among California Democrats as gubernatorial candidates rebuff calls to drop out
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Fact check: Did French border guards mock influencers returning from Dubai amid Iran war?
Iran’s fight for survival / The widening war / Trump’s nebulous goals : Sources & Methods
Map: 4.9-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Louisiana
Paxton vows he’s ‘staying in this race’ even if Trump backs Cornyn in Texas GOP clash
Which Kurdish groups is the US rallying to fight Iran?
-
World1 week agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Wisconsin4 days agoSetting sail on iceboats across a frozen lake in Wisconsin
-
Massachusetts1 week agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Maryland5 days agoAM showers Sunday in Maryland
-
Massachusetts3 days agoMassachusetts man awaits word from family in Iran after attacks
-
Florida5 days agoFlorida man rescued after being stuck in shoulder-deep mud for days
-
Denver, CO1 week ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Oregon6 days ago2026 OSAA Oregon Wrestling State Championship Results And Brackets – FloWrestling