Good morning! Trump adds more women to his cabinet, Kamala Harris is planning her next steps, and a new documentary aims to put Afghan women's rights at the top of the global agenda.
- Still fighting. The new documentary Bread and Roses, which premiered on Apple TV on Friday, has a powerhouse producing team behind it: activist Malala Yousafzai, actor Jennifer Lawrence, and director Sahra Mani.
The film follows women in Afghanistan after the takeover of the Taliban in 2021. The women fight for their freedom, with their efforts captured in guerilla-style footage, often shot on phone cameras. "This documentary is a form of solidarity for Afghan women and girls, and it's also a form of resistance against the Taliban, which is trying to make Afghan women invisible and erase them," Yousafzai told me in a Zoom interview.
Since Mani started making the film in 2021, the situation for Afghan women hasn't gotten better. In fact, it's gotten worse. "If I wanted to make this film at this moment, it wouldn’t be possible," Mani says. At the start of this stretch of the Taliban's rule, women couldn't work or attend school; now, they can't leave the house without a chaperone, Mani says.
For Yousafzai, the moment that stands out in the film is when dentist Zahra Mohammadi converts her office into a place for women to organize. "All she wanted to do was be a dentist, but she could no longer do that. That's a moment that I can personally connect to," says Yousafzai, who became a public figure after she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education at age 15.
Lawrence recalls a moment in Bread and Roses when Sharifa Movahidzedeh, who finds it oppressive to go from a career as a government employee to life as a housewife, escapes to a roof to listen to a song she loves, "just to find some peace."
The actor joined as a producer on the film, adding to a growing portfolio of work in support of women's rights. Lawrence also served as a producer on Zurawski v Texas, the documentary about Texas's abortion ban and the women who fought it in a landmark lawsuit. Her passion for both projects, she says, came from being an American, for Zurawski v Texas, and "a human" for Bread and Roses.
Yousafzai hopes that the film puts Afghan women's rights back at the top of the global agenda, part of the conversation about women's rights worldwide. She urges nations not to normalize relations with the Taliban, which she says codifies gender apartheid. "We need more unity and sisterhood to protect women's rights in Afghanistan, but also globally," she says. "It's about protection for women everywhere."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
