“Afghani”, this public service documentary must-see

We imagine him with a muzzle, confined under an anonymous burqa, a victim of the barbarism of the Taliban. The Afghan woman crystallizes many clichés in our Western imagination. A reductive vision that the journalist Solène Chalvon-Fioriti finely unravels in a moving documentary, broadcast on Sunday 12 March at 20:55 on France 5.

Three questions to Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, director of the documentary “Afghanes”

To miss. Why give a voice to four generations of women?

Solene Chalvon Fioriti. The voice of Afghan women has long since been confiscated from them. I wanted to let them speak for themselves. It was essential that there were no men, whether on screen or within the team or in the room where we were shooting. The case of Afghanistan is unprecedented: since women have very young children, 4 consecutive generations have experienced war. The older ones have seen the skirt as well as the compulsory burqa or the deprivation of education, capitalism as well as communism. It seems that nothing changes, yet they have gone through very different lives. With the Taliban, they fear a terrifying setback. For the youngest, another form of fear is taking shape. It looks more like a stupor: they did not know this phantom figure and could not imagine the current horrors.

You say in the documentary that “The enemy of Afghan women has many faces”. What do you mean ?

In our imagination, the enemy of the Afghan woman is the Taliban. But this image is reductive. We forget that the first rape of an Afghan woman takes place at her home. Hers I am her husband, her brother, the men of her village. They are also the other women, and this, from birth. In closed communities, traditions that are impervious to the outside world are perpetuated. We see in particular, in the documentary, a stoning scene. Behind, we hear the cries calling to destroy this woman, in the desire to obliterate her completely. Women are an outlet, and it didn’t start with the Taliban. For 40 years people have been dispossessed of their property, facing endemic poverty. In this context, women have become a symbolic asset.

When did this erasure of Afghan women go back?

It started with the Soviets. Since then, Afghan society has been shaped by violence. Our countries and our international institutions took part. We have confined Afghan women to political propaganda, we have placed our wishes upon them. This documentary is a historical and sentimental statement. Afghanistan is a country that sounds very masculine, because it has long been told by men. I wanted to allow these women, whom I met during my reports or during my years in Afghanistan, to tell their stories. And it is through their words that another story of the country is taking shape.