Bread & Roses

The Project

Bread & Roses is a documentary capturing the experiences of Afghan women living under the Taliban since they took control of Kabul in 2021. The film was selected for the 2023 Cannes Festival and will premiere there as a Special Screening in the festival. It was produced by Excellent Cadaver, Jennifer Lawrence and Justine Ciarrocchi’s production company, with Sahra Mani, the director, also taking producer credits.

The Artist

Sahra Mani is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, university lecturer, and founder of Afghanistan Documentary House. She began working in media in 2001 with the goal of using media as a catalyst for good. She received a Masters degree in documentary filmmaking from University of the Arts London and has since focused on creating documentaries about her own country Afghanistan. Her films include Kaloo School (2013), Beyond the Burka (2014), and A Thousand Girls Like Me (2018). Like many cinema professionals and artists, Mani fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took power in the summer of 2021 and is living now in Europe.

The Goal

Bread And Roses is described as an unpoliticized tale of resilience as well as “a raw, un-sanitized depiction of the female plight in Afghanistan.” The arrival of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement in power has had a catastrophic impact on women’s rights, which had been slowly advancing, stripping them of access to education, employment and public spaces. The film follows three women, desperate to recover their autonomy, who largely tell their stories through their own lenses.