When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan three years ago, one of the group’s first orders of business was to systematically erase women’s rights. Girls’ schools shuttered, women were barred from public spaces and female professionals were told not to return to work.
“Bread & Roses,” which follows the lives of three Afghan women in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power, does not communicate these prohibitions in voice-over or title cards. Instead, the director, Sahra Mani, makes the deliberate choice to clear the way for her subjects to reach the audience directly, in their own words.
Through cellphone footage captured on the fly, the documentary zeros in on three subjects defying their loss of freedom: Sharifa, a former government employee stuck at home because of restrictions to being out in public; Zahra, a dentist taken by the Taliban after protesting for her rights; and Taranom, an activist sheltering in a safe house in Pakistan. Intercutting among scenes of these experiences, the film illustrates the effective options for women living under Taliban rule: house arrest, prison or exile.
As the three stories veer off in different directions, the film struggles to coalesce around a clean narrative. It doesn’t help that we often only receive snippets of episodes, with the contexts hazy and the relations among those onscreen uncertain. But while the immediacy of the storytelling may blur out precise details, it excels at building stakes. When, in one memorable scene, young girls address the camera to demand brighter futures, the movie’s message and ongoing mission are thrown into sharp relief.
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