Malala Yousafzai, Jennifer Lawrence hope their new documentary ‘Bread and Roses’ will put Afghan women’s rights at the top of the global agenda
The new documentary Bread and Roses, which premiered on Apple TV on Friday, has a strong production team behind it: activist Malala Yousafzai, actor Jennifer Lawrence and director Sahra Mani.
The film follows women in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021. The women fight for their freedom, with their efforts captured in guerrilla-style footage, often recorded on phone camera. “This documentary is a form of solidarity for Afghan women and girls, and also a form of resistance against the Taliban, who are trying to trying to make Afghan women invisible and erase them.”
Since Mani started making the film in 2021, the situation of Afghan women has not improved. In fact, it has gotten worse. “If I wanted to make this film at this time, it would be impossible,” Mani said. At the beginning of Taliban rule, women could not work or go to school; Mani says now they can’t leave the house unaccompanied.
For Yousafzai, the standout moment in the film is when dentist Zahra Mohammadi turns her office into a space for women to organize. “All she wanted to do was become a dentist, but she can no longer do that. It was a moment I could personally connect with,” said Yousafzai, who became a public figure after being shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating education for girls at age 15.
Lawrence recalls a moment in Bread and Roses when Sharifa Movahidzedeh, who felt suffocated transitioning from her job as a government employee to life as a housewife, escaped to a rooftop to listen to a song she loved, “ just to find some peace. ”
The actor comes on board as a producer on the film, adding to his growing portfolio of work supporting women’s rights. Lawrence also served as producer of Zurawski v Texas, a documentary about Texas’ abortion ban and the women who fought it in a landmark case. Her passion for both projects, she says, comes from being an American, involved in Zurawski v Texas, and “a human being” for Bread and Roses.
Yousafzai hopes the film will bring Afghan women’s rights back to the top of the global agenda, part of the discussion about women’s rights around the world. She urged countries not to normalize relations with the Taliban, which she said had codified gender racism. “We need greater solidarity and sisterhood to protect women’s rights in Afghanistan and globally,” she said. “It’s about protecting women everywhere.”
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