Shakiba Adil & Elina Hirvonen: The Secret Reading Club of Kabul

There are several documentaries from Taliban’s Afghanistan on the market. I was last year in the jury of WatchDocs in Warsaw, where “Kabul. Warrior’s Prayer” by Aboozar Amini was given the main award. And I saw “If Luck Will Come” by Camille Bildsøe (https://filmkommentaren.dk/camille-bildsoee-if-luck-will-come/) at its world premiere in Copenhagen. And now another strong film, “The Secret Reading Club of Kabul” has crossed the water from Copenhagen to Malmø to be in the main competition of Nordisk Panorama, the film of Danish Camille Bildsøe is also in Malmø competing in the section New Nordic Voices. Both films will be discussed in the juries, when awards will be decided. All three mentioned documentaries are far away from the reportage, they go behind the headlines with brave protagonists and filmmakers.

Below you will find the catalogue text of the film, when it was at CPH:DOX, but before you read that let me praise the film for having found a quiet tone of compassion and an elegant way of going from the voice and presence of Shakiba Adil in Helsinki to the videos of three young Afghan women, to the – seen before but still shocking, a warning – clips of women being shot in public stadions, or the beating in streets, constructed with information year after year from 2021, when Taliban regained the power and continued their terrible atrocities. Linked by the story about the three young women reading the diaries of Anne Frank, first together, later through cell phone connections as it grew too dangerous to leave their houses. And the catalogue text:

“In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, and speak freely, a group of young women risk their lives to form a secret reading circle. Inspired by Anne Frank’s experiences in 1940s Amsterdam, a group of young women in Kabul begin to write their own diaries. They secretly establish a reading circle. They have to, because the Taliban forbids women from reading and educating themselves. We experience with shocking clarity what is at stake when the Taliban storms a hidden school or arrests young girls for practicing martial arts.

Partially filmed by the women themselves, ‘The Secret Reading Club of Kabul’ is an intimate and confidential testimony to the power of art to keep hope and humanism alive. It is also a moving declaration of love for literature and for the act of reading itself. 

The story is interwoven with director Shakiba Adil’s own journey. As a girl, she grew up under the first Taliban regime, and after the fall of the Taliban, she became the first woman to appear on Afghan television. After being forced to flee her homeland twice, she has now dedicated her film to the new generation facing the same oppression she herself has endured.”

Finland, Norway, 2026, 94 mins.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️❤️