Afghanistan is her home and Zahrah Nabi is staying. While many Afghans, both men and women, have fled the return of Taliban rule, Nabi is determined to fight for her rights. A rare glimpse into the life and dreams of a woman who has chosen to stand her ground, no matter the consequences.
Shams Sanam ran for his life after a phone call threatening to chop off his head. Musicians had no space in the new Afghanistan under Taliban. The 27-year-old rabab player managed to escape to neighboring Pakistan, but has found life difficult without an income or a support system.
Khial Shinwari witnessed the horror of the evacuation from Afghanistan’s military base. He never expected his country would fall into the Taliban's hands, again. The 35-year-old Afghan air force pilot had a mission to evacuate 130 people, and then enacted his own family evacuation plan, to the United States. Now, he grapples with a vastly different life but refuses to give up on his dreams of taking flight again.
She escaped one war to face another. Fatema Hosseini, then 27, was living with her family in Kabul, in August 2021 when the Taliban took over the country. As a journalist who worked for the American media, Fatema had to find a way out. But another war would confront them, this time in Ukraine.
In the fall of 2021, Zafar Bamyani, Zabihullah Ghazi, and Maryam Khamosh were among hundreds of Afghan journalists fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover. As reporters for international broadcaster Voice of America, they were prime targets with a difficult decision to make. Using present-day interviews and video diaries filmed starting as early as 15 days before the Taliban seized control, the film tells their story of leaving their life’s work and passions behind. Now relocated to different cities across the U.S., the journalists must start anew as their home country faces the fallout of a changing media landscape and diminished press freedoms.
After the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music had to evacuate - ultimately set to relocate in Lisbon - but not without two young girls, the last students to leave the country.
