How do you make a film about Afghan women protesters without being in Afghanistan?

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

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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.

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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