Sahraa Karimi stands for much that has happened in Afghanistan over the past two decades. She is the first (and only) woman in the country to earn a PhD in directing and screenwriting, and an intrepid filmmaker. In 2019 she showed “Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” at the Venice Film Festival, a documentary about three Afghan women between burqa and abortion. However, it also stands for a lot of things that have been in danger in their country since the Taliban marched through.
“Everything that I have worked so hard for as a filmmaker in my country is in danger of perishing,” she now writes in a letter that she has spread on social networks and in which she asks the film world for help. “When the Taliban are in power, they will ban all art.”
She has seen what that means before. She is the first president of the state organization Afghan Film, which supports new productions and houses the country’s entire film archive, or rather, its remnants. Most of the collection was destroyed in 1996 when the Taliban, who had come to power, declared film heretical. The fact that there are still old Afghan films at all is probably thanks to employees who were able to smuggle out some material at the time. And now everything from the beginning?
“The Taliban will deprive women of their rights, we will be pushed into the shadows of our home.”
The higher functionaries of the Taliban have changed today: They speak of the fact that nobody has to fear revenge, that women also get their rights, that they give space to culture. How big this square will be is difficult to predict. And one will have to see whether provincial commanders and lower-ranking fighters will also stand up for the supposed change. Sahraa Karimi is already reporting on violence and oppression. “In the past weeks the Taliban have massacred our people, they kidnapped many children, sold girls to their husbands as child brides, they murdered women because of their clothes, they tortured and murdered one of our beloved comedians and one of our poets and those in charge for the culture and media of our now deposed government. ” Art and women’s rights in Afghanistan are in great danger, writes they. “The Taliban will deprive women of their rights, we will be pushed into the shadows of our home.”
When Karimi presented her women’s film in Venice, she had a prominent supporter in Angelina Jolie by her side. “In times when the future of the country is in the balance, this film reminds us,” said the US actress at the time, “what is at stake for the millions of Afghan women who deserve their freedom, independence and security to make their own decisions about their lives. ” That was two years ago.