Afghanistan’s Freedom of Expression and the Voices of Women At Risk: A Plea for Help

Sahraa Karimi, the Afghani director of the 2019 Venice premiering film, ‘Hava, Maryam, Ayesha’ and the current President of the Afhan Film Organization, the state’s film company, and its first female president, pleads with the world to stand against the Taliban’s rule which will eliminate the voice of women and all free expression.

Sydney Levine
SydneysBuzz The Blog
2 min readSep 11, 2021

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Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani by AP

To All the #Film_Communities in The World and Who Loves Film and Cinema! I write to you with a broken heart and a deep hope that you can join me in protecting my beautiful people, especially filmmakers from the Taliban. #Share it please, don’t be #silent.

During the current Venice Film Festival a discussion was held to explore the role the film community can play in increasing awareness of the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan.

Afghan filmmakers Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani (A Thousand Girls Like Me) the documentary filmmaker who is presenting her latest project at the CoProduction Market in Venice.

Both women described the situation leading up to the Taliban seizing control of Afghanistan in August and made impassioned pleas to the film community to help their voices to be heard.

Read the full article on Deadline here.

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Sydney’s 40+ years in international film business include exec positions in acquisitions, twice selling FilmFinders, the 1st film database, teaching & writing.