Year: 2023

Runtime: 90 minutes

Director: Sahra Mani

By Sarah Manvel

The courage on display in this documentary is earth-shattering. “Bread and Roses” in its entirety is a testament to human spirit and defiance in the face of great human evil, specifically when the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021. In that same month, a dentist named Zahra celebrated her engagement, a happy day which everyone present filmed on their phones. But within 48 hours the city had fallen and the phone videos being taken were obviously very different. Director Sahra Mani built links with several different women inside Kabul during this awful time, and used their secret footage and extreme bravery to show the truth of what life is currently like inside Afghanistan. But it’s not a dark film; the level of hope on display makes it impossible to despair.

Immediately after the takeover, Zahra ordered a large metal sign, with her name prominently displayed in English and Pashto, for the street outside her office. She also offered her practice as a gathering space for women who were determined to stand against the new government, and who were brave enough to immediately go onto public march – against the Taliban, with machine guns among other weapons – with nothing but their courage for protection. Of course this did not always end well, and the footage of women screaming and scattering in the streets is hard to watch. Some of their friends disappeared. Some, such as Taranom, had to flee to refugee camps in Pakistan, where at least they had their cameraphones to document their misery. Others, such as Sharifa, were forcibly removed from their careers to enforced, monitored idleness at home. Their sense of shock is palpable – how could their ordinary lives vanish so quickly? But there’s also the sense of relief in the secret networks of women offering education and medical help, and the solidarity that comes from sharing food and stories with like-minded people. 

The immediacy of their experiences after the takeover and the strength of their feeling cuts through the screen like the sharpest of blades. When the women debate tactics, or make frantic calls to locate arrested friends, we are alongside their attempts to wriggle out of the trap that’s locked in around their country. Zahra and her friends repeatedly take to the streets with social media hashtags written on their bodies and shouts of “bread, work and education” attracting honks of support from passing cars and violent suppression from the people in power. But the most devastating scene is of five little girls, most of them young enough to be missing some milk teeth, waving signs denouncing the Taliban and asking to be allowed to wear the hijab (instead of the chador) and go to school. 

It’s presumably this heart-melting courage that made Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence agree to produce the movie. Her walk on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival (in a red gown, diamond necklace and flip-flops) brought the movie global attention, including three UK newspaper front pages with following day. Ms Mani and Zahra were also present at the premiere screening (as was I), where Ms Lawrence stood in supportive silence as Ms Mani described the difficulty in safely receiving the footage and Zahra tearfully asked the world not to forget Afghan women. The title comes from an old union rallying cry, “We want bread and roses too,” i.e., the stuff of life needed both to survive and thrive. Of course women around the world deserve nothing less, but when our rights are suppressed we often forget the latter is just as important as the former. This documentary does a remarkable job of reminding the world both of women’s rights but also our human responsibility to the women of Afghanistan. It deserves not only our attention but also our action.