Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai give voice to silenced Afghan women in ‘Bread & Roses’: ‘It’s crucial we have a record of all this’

Before the Taliban destroyed and remade Afghanistan to their liking in August 2021, Zahra Mohammadi’s life had been in full bloom. Her dental clinic in Kabul was thriving, she was set to marry a partner who she loved. Then, darkness descended. Mohammadi, her life, her clients, her romance, were all lost to the shadows. And even so, her story continues. The dentist, along with many other women, became a fierce activist fighting for Afghan women’s rights. The Taliban has banned women from secondary schools, and denied them the right to work, to marry whom they choose and to dress as they like. Eventually, Mohammadi was forced into exile. Her journey, as well as many others of women both named and unnamed, is told in the documentary Bread & Roses by Afghani director Sahra Mani. The film is produced by actress Jennifer Lawrence and by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

In a Los Angeles hotel room, the three women are discussing their film, which premieres on Apple TV+ on November 22. It’s the morning after its red-carpet debut at the Hammer Museum. They make an unlikely trio: an Afghan director, a young Pakistani activist and a Hollywood actress. In addition to their better-known work, Yousafzai and Lawrence have focused more recently on projects that tell women’s stories. Bread & Roses is a primary example, and largely relies on home footage filmed by a half-dozen women of their day-to-day lives, their struggles not just to survive, but to oppose the Taliban regime, and in some cases, their inevitable exit from their country.

“I always felt like the story of Afghanistan and of these women was also my own. That’s why I want to dedicate my life to telling their stories and sharing them with the world,” says Mani. Three years ago, she became familiar with the plight of women like those profiled in the movie via non-profits in Germany and Spain that provide support to Afghans, thanks largely to organization People in Need. “There were many artists, many women, and they started to share their videos with me, and I felt like they were expecting something from me beyond merely archiving them, probably that I would make a film. So when Jennifer got in touch with me, it was a dream come true. Later, we began to collaborate with Malala and decided to make the film to give voice to Afghan women on a larger scale.”

Lawrence says this was her intention from the beginning. “I first got into contact with Sahra in 2021, when Kabul fell. I wanted to get cameras in there to make a movie,” says the actress, who won an of the Oscar for her role in Silver Linings Playbook. “And when we found Sahra, she was already compiling images from women, and the film was born. Then, Malala added her incomparable voice to our movie.”

For 27-year-old Yousafzai, it was important “to draw attention to what is happening to Afghan women and girls with the return of the Taliban.” The extremist group was in the country from the mid-1990s to 2001, when it was driven out and the country was allowed to flourish for 20 years.

“Women did so many things in the country during those two decades, and they knew exactly what would happen if the Taliban erased them from public life,” says Yousafzai. “And indeed, we see that during the last three and a half years, they’ve eliminated them, taken away all opportunities including work, employment and political representation. While I was out campaigning, I ran into this documentary, which was showing this, and I immediately said I’d be a part of it, because I knew that the Taliban would do anything possible to invisibilize women.”

To Yousafzai, a film is a “very powerful” way of showing the world what is happening, and today, four years later, she thinks “it’s even more crucial,” and that there are even more limits being placed upon women “that separate them from basic opportunities like leaving the house to see a doctor; essentially, systematic oppression in the form of gender apartheid.” The title of the film is a reference to the fundamental opportunities these women no longer have access to: sustenance, but also hopes and dreams.

The resulting images are at times tortured, occasionally festive, and often striking—such as when women protest in front of cameras against the Taliban, joined by young girls and a little boy dressed as an extremist, clad in a suit and wielding a gun. As viewers slowly get to know the characters — there’s no narrator to guide in this process, besides the women themselves — a connection is forged. We suffer in their sadness, when they are thrust into risky situations and when they flee.

Mani resolved to make the film based on the women’s confidence in her. She trained them to film, taught them which angles to shoot from, to record details of their food, their everyday lives, the things that surprised them. “I explained to them that it was the only way to preserve a moment from our history, of how we wound up alone and of how Afghan women fight for their rights. We never expected that any government would simply give them to us. We continue to fight,” she says, as her producers nod.

Yousafzai agrees. “I believe in the power of telling stories when it comes to activism, they are at its very heart.” To be able to see these women’s daily lives, “helps to understand. Many people aren’t aware of the day-to-day situation of Afghan women, that’s why it was so important to film it.”

She continues: “They are showing us how the things they worked so hard for, the right to have a life, an education, was suddenly taken away from them by the Taliban, who punish women for simply daring to work or go to the doctor or read or thing, or merely leaving the house because they have to go to court, because they are their family’s only source of income. I think it’s crucial we have a record of all this. I think that sharing their stories is important because that becomes part of the worldwide movement that Afghan women activists are leading from inside and outside of their country that fights to put more pressure on leaders.”

A few months ago, Lawrence premiered her documentary Zurawski v Texas, about the difficulties of accessing abortions in the southern United States, and to varying extents, throughout the rest of the country. She recognizes that Western countries aren’t on the best footing when it comes to these issues. Is she worried that women’s rights are at risk throughout the rest of the world, and especially in the United States, given the political situation it is facing for the next four years? “Yes I am. It’s terrifying. I live in a country where women’s rights are being taken away. We live in a world in which women are oppressed. And when apathy begins to spread and shatter our empathy and our humanity, we lose contact with each other. It ruins the world, and it spreads. And that really scares me.”

Mani says that she has remained in contact with the women in the film, that she speaks with some of them every couple of days and that most of them have left the country. “But there are millions of women in even worse situations who can’t leave because of flaws in the legal system.” Mohammadi herself was present at the film’s screening at Cannes. Far from her home, her people, her work, the love of her life. But free.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition