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Agence France-Presse

A rare inside account of the tyranny of the Taliban and its impact on Afghan women hits screens this week.
Produced by actress Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Bread & Roses, a feature-length documentary shot using smartphones, immerses the viewer in the daily asphyxiation endured by half the population of Afghanistan since the withdrawal of US troops paved the way for the Taliban to seize power.
“When Kabul fell in 2021, all women lost their very basic rights. They lost their rights to be educated, to work,” Lawrence said in Los Angeles.
“Some of them were doctors and had high degrees, and then their lives were completely changed overnight.”


The documentary, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, was directed by exiled Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who reached out to a dozen women after the fall of Kabul.
She taught them how to film themselves with their phones – resulting in a moving depiction of the intertwined stories of three Afghan women.
We meet Zahra – a dentist whose practice is threatened with closure by the Taliban – who is suddenly propelled to the head of the protests against the regime.
Sharifa, a former civil servant, is stripped of her job and cloistered at home, reduced to hanging laundry on her roof to get a breath of fresh air.
And Taranom, an activist in exile in neighbouring Pakistan, watches helplessly as her homeland sinks into medieval intolerance.
“The restrictions are getting tighter and tighter right now,” Mani said on the red carpet at the film’s Los Angeles premiere.
And hardly anyone outside the country seems to care, she added.
“The women of Afghanistan didn’t receive the support they deserved from the international community.”
Since its return to power, the Taliban has established a “gender apartheid” in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.
Islam does not prohibit a girl from learning, Islam does not prohibit a woman from working
Education activist Malala Yousafzai
Women are gradually being erased from public spaces: Taliban authorities have banned post-secondary education for girls and women, restricted employment, and blocked access to parks and other public places.
A recent law even prohibits women from singing or reciting poetry in public.
The Taliban follows an austere brand of Islam, whose interpretations of holy texts are disputed by many scholars.
“The Taliban claim to represent the culture and religion while they’re a very small group of men who do not actually represent the diversity of the country,” said Yousafzai, an executive producer of the film.
“Islam does not prohibit a girl from learning, Islam does not prohibit a woman from working.”
Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist whom the Taliban tried to assassinate when she was 15 for her advocacy of education for women and children.
The documentary captures the first year after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, including moments of bravery when women speak out against repression.
“You closed universities and schools, you might as well kill me!” a protester shouts at a Taliban who is threatening her during a demonstration.

These gatherings of women – under the slogan “Work, bread, education!” – are methodically crushed by the regime.
Protesters are beaten, some are arrested, others kidnapped.
Slowly, the resistance fades, but it does not die: some Afghan women are now trying to educate themselves through clandestine courses.
Three years after the Taliban seized power from a hapless and corrupt civilian government, few countries have officially recognised its regime.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election to the US presidency, the fundamentalists have made it known that they hope to “open a new chapter” in relations between Kabul and Washington, where a more transactional foreign policy outlook is expected to prevail.
For Mani, that rings alarm bells.
Giving up on defending the rights of Afghan women would be a serious mistake – and one the West could come to regret, she said.
The less educated Afghan women are, the more vulnerable their sons are to the ideology that birthed the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
“If we are paying the price today, you might pay the price tomorrow,” she said.
Bread & Roses begins streaming on Apple TV+ on November 22.


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American cinema

Jennifer Lawrence-produced film shows women’s torment in Afghanistan under the Taliban

(From left) Bread & Roses producers Malala Yousafzai, Jennifer Lawrence and Justine Ciarrocchi, and director Sahra Mani, attend the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on November 14, 2024. Photo: AFP

Burqa-clad Afghan women hold placards as they protest for their right to education, in Mazar-i-Sharif, on August 12, 2023. Photo: AFP

How Disney+’s Interior Chinatown with Jimmy O. Yang mocks Asian stereotypes in Hollywood

Jimmy O. Yang (left) and Ronny Chieng arrive for the premiere of Interior Chinatown in Los Angeles. Yang stars as an Asian actor who finds his world turned upside down in unusual ways. Photo: AFP

(From left) Actress Chloe Bennet, actor Jimmy O. Yang, show creator Charles Yu, actor Ronny Chieng and director Taika Waititi at the premiere of Interior Chinatown in Los Angeles. Photo: AFP

Bennet, born Chloe Wang to a Chinese father and white American mother, had to change her last name to land roles in Hollywood. Photo: AFP

Yu’, whose 2020 bestseller delivers a humorous takedown of racism in US society through the adventures of Willis Wu. Photo: AFP

UN: Taliban restrictions on Afghan women and girls provide a ‘distressing vision’

Afghan women queue to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group, in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 23, 2023. Photo: AP

Mohammad Faqir Mohammad, Deputy of the Taliban’s Ministry of Virtue and Vice, speaks during a press conference in Kabul on August 20, 2024. Photo: AFP

Burqa-clad Afghan women in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Thursday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Will suing the Taliban protect Afghan women? Maybe with China’s help

Burqa-clad women walk with a girl along a street in Fayzabad district, Badakhshan province in Afghanistan on September 22. Photo: AFP

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi poses for a photo with Amir Khan Mutaqi, then the acting foreign minister of Afghanistan, in Kabul in 2022. Photo: Xinhua via AP

Travel influencer couple on horror India gang rape and Taliban interrogation during epic 6-year motorbike trip

Travel influencers Fernanda (right) and Vicente take a break in Spiti Valley, in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, during their six-year motorbike trip. The couple open up about Fernanda’s gang rape in India and other experiences during their trip, including being interrogated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Konya, Turkey. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda with a rented motorbike in Sri Lanka. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Jodhpur, India. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente camp near Kalut, in Iran’s Hormozgan province. Photo: Instagram @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vincente at the Khunjerab Pass, in the mountains on the border of Pakistan and China. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda makes friends in Rajasthan, India. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Samarra, Iraq. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda in Kuwait, approaching Saudi Arabia. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente in Cappadocia, Turkey. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

Fernanda and Vicente near Passu, a small village in northern Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region. Photo: Instagram / @vueltaalmundoenmoto

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Apple TV+ documentary Bread & Roses, co-produced by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, was shot entirely on smartphones


Apple TV+ documentary Bread & Roses, co-produced by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, was shot entirely on smartphones.
