Bread and Roses review – a powerful, incendiary film about Afghan women

Last year was certainly an annus special for Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence. She starred in one of the worst and most weirdly misogynistic sex comedies ever made (the abysmal No hard feelings), while also producing this remarkable documentary about women’s rights in Afghanistan in collaboration with Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.

Bread and roses opens with slick Hollywood style: Kabul is booming in the summer of 2021, full of engagement parties and vibrant street life captured by hand-held phone footage and the lush establishing shots of cinematographer Abdul Sami Murtaza. So on August 15, everything changes. The whip-wielding, grim Taliban re-enter the city, filmed swarming down from the mountains with the inevitable echoes of an orc attack from Lord of