Jailed Afghan girls pack a punch in US film

An explosive documentary by an Iranian-American has generated a buzz at the 42nd International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here.

New York-based Tanaz Eshaghian’s 70-minute Love Crimes of Kabul, which premiered on HBO in July this year, is an unsettling, no-holds-barred study of the experiences of three Afghan girls lodged in Kabul’s Badum Bagh women’s prison for transgressing an oppressively conservative society’s moral code.

The documentary is built around free-wheeling interviews with the three girls – Kareema, 20, pregnant out of wedlock; Aleema, 23, a runaway from an abusive home; and Sabereh, 18, accused of having pre-marital sex. The film also records the views of their families and lovers, besides prison and law officials of the land.

These are women trapped in a hopeless cul-de-sac. So the portraits that emerge are often disturbing. Yet, Love Crimes of Kabul has an oddly positive ring to it.

Each of the jailed trio comes across as a spirited individual with the courage to follow her heart all the way to the bitter end and assert her right to take control of her life in the face of insurmountable societal odds.

One prison official declares then “love is a crime” and then goes on to attribute the plight of these women to “too much freedom”.

Kareema has turned herself and her lover, Firuz, over to the law because in imprisonment lies her only hope. She knows that the father of her unborn child would be set free only if he agrees to accept her as his wife.

Aleema is in jail facing trial for having run away from a violent family and sought refuge with a woman named Zia, who attempts to sell her to an undercover cop. One social worker tells her: “A bad husband is better than no husband.” But Aleema isn’t one to submit to that regressive dictum.

The most complex of the three cases is that of a Hazara teenager Sabereh, who has been reported by her own father when she is caught in the company with a 17-year-old Pashtun neighbour. Although the doctor’s report shows that she is still a virgin, she faces a ‘moral turpitude’ rap.

Love Crimes of Kabul is in spirit an extension of Eshaghian’s 2008 documentary, Be Like Others, which dealt with the plight of Iranian men opting for sex-change surgery. The defiant girls in her latest film are essentially victims of archaic moral principles but none is willing to go down without a fight.