'WE CAN'T ALL LEAVE'

Sima's Song spotlights the human drama of friendship between two women of opposing ideologies in war-torn Afghanistan....The story of an evening with Afghan director Roya Sadat who spoke to a Delhi audience just as her film won a major Canadian award.

- NUPUR BASU

THE October chill was just setting in and as the evening turned to night, the audience eagerly waited to view celebrated award-winning Afghan woman Director, Roya Sadat's latest film, Sima's Song, in Delhi's Max Mueller Bhavan.

Roya, like many women filmmakers, journalists and activists in Afghanistan now lives in exile in the West and made this film in 2024 while in exile. Sima's Song begins after the Taliban have taken control of Kabul city. It zeroes in on a protest demonstration on the streets by Afghan women and the Taliban forces using force and trying to disperse them.

Cut to the interior of a home in Kabul. An elderly Suraya tells her granddaughter about her friend, Sima, a singer. The grandmother recalls the Cold War which was about to break out in Afghanistan in the late '70s, and how she and her friend Sima got caught in the opposing ends of the conflict.

Suraya is played by award winning actor Mozhdah Jamalzadah, an Afghan Canadian singer, actress, model, and activist known for championing women's rights in Afghanistan.

Raised in Vancouver after fleeing Kabul during the Afghan civil war, she gained fame with her song 'Sher Bacha e Afghani'. Niloufar Koukhani who plays Sima in the film is a renowned Iranian actor best known for her roles in popular TV serials in Iran such as Viper of Tehran (2024), a TV series.

Sadat has extracted powerful performances from both the lead characters.

Flash back to 1979, Kabul.

Suraya and Sima are in the prime of their youth. Despite the difference in their social status - Suraya is the daughter of a top Communist leader in Afghanistan and Sima is the daughter of the domestic help in their house - both women are soul sisters.

Suraya studies politics and Sima music at the university of Kabul. But the country's unstable political landscape is soon about to cause deep chasms between them.