Afghan women defying the Taliban

WHEN KABUL FELL TO THE TALIBAN, RETURNING Afghanistan to the fundamentalist group's control, women who did not flee faced a reality in which they could no longer be who they are: journalists deleted evidence of their work, artists destroyed their creations, and graduates set fire to their degrees.

- YASMEEN SERHAN

But some chose to fight back. Their defiance, and the dangers that have come with it, are vividly captured in Bread & Roses, a documentary that follows three women in real time as their lives become undone by the Taliban's return. There's Zahra Mohammadi, 33, a newly married dentist whose practice quickly transforms into a meeting space for fellow activists. There's Taranom Seyedi, 39, a women'srights activist who is forced into exile in neighboring Pakistan. And there's Sharifa Movahidzadeh, 31, a government employee who is confined to her home.

More than just a story about the brutality of the Taliban, Bread & Roses is "about the women's resistance in Afghanistan," says Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar-winning actor and a producer of the film. She spoke with TIME alongside award-winning Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who directed, and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, an executive producer. Ahead of its June 21 release on Apple TV+, the women explained how the project came together, the fate of its protagonists, and what impact they hope it will have on a world whose attention has been largely drawn elsewhere.

TIME: How did this project come together?

Sahra Mani: When the Taliban took over the country in 2021, we saw them impose a lot of restrictions on women's education, women's movement. We saw extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, illegal detention, and a lot of women disappearing. As a filmmaker, I was thinking, What can I do? It was my goal to make a film about this situation, and I was very lucky that Jennifer and [fellow producer] Justine [Ciarrocchi] wrote an email telling me that if I want to make a film, they would be happy to support the project.