After being forced to flee their country after the Taliban takeover of 2021, four charismatic and influential Afghan women are the focus of this immersive, powerful and confrontational documentary. As they adjust to life in a new country away from their culture and the support of their homeland, they fight to place once more the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan at the forefront of world attention.
Nevretheless, the harsh truth (and this is touched on in the film) is that conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have pushed the stark and dangerous issues facing Afghan women in their homeland off the front pages or lead television coverage. Any power and influence that the women held in their country has been usurped by the strict Taliban authorities, with two decades of progress brutally dismantled and tossed to one side.
From their exile abroad – in this case they all eventually end up in Canada – these four women (former parliamentarians, politicians, ministers and journalists) struggle to adjust to a new way of life while also fighting for women’s rights back in Afghanistan. From a distance they must endure watching the Taliban strip women and girls of the right to be educated, to work and to participate in Afghan society.
Initially the film introduces three of the women (all filmed alongside stretches of water) as they talk about their lives and how they managed to flee their country. Filmed in Athens in early 2022 the three – Nilofar Moradi, Homaira Ayubi and Zefnoon Safi – made their way out of the country with immediate family and a few belongings. Canada eventually offers them a safe haven, and in disparate areas (Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa) the three must start their lives anew.
The fourth woman, who acts as a link of sorts between them all, is Nargis Nehan, a former Afghan minister and activist, who is seen interviewed on Canadian television about the situation for women in Afghanistan, speaking eloquently and passionately in English, and reinforcing the importance of the international spotlight remaining on the activities of the Taliban.
Homaira Ayubi, aged 53, is a former member of Parliament for the Farah Province, serving four terms and chairing the government’s anti-corruption caucus; Zefnoon Safi, aged 52, had a 20-year-long political career and is a former member of Parliament for the Taliban stronghold Laghman Province; Nilofar Moradi, aged 27, is a television reporter who openly criticised the Taliban during their long war against Western forces in Afghanistan, and Nargis Nehan aged 46 was Minister of Mines and Petroleum in the Afghanistan Parliament and who worked closely with Afghanistan’s ousted President Ashraf Ghani, previously holding a variety of posts in his government.
Canada may offer a safe haven, but also new problems and issues. For Zefnoon Safi, living in a hotel on the outskirts of Calgary she continues to connect with family at home while suffering from high blood pressure. Homaira Ayubi shares a tiny apartment with her husband, two grown sons and a daughter-in-law. But she starts recruiting other Afghan exiles – politicians, journalists, and lawyers – to build a network that can help newly arrived Afghans as well as draw attention to the rapid rollback of women’s rights in her country.
Nilofar Moradi – whose mother was on the country’s Great Council – settles in Ottawa, where her young son starts school, and her husband finds work so she can return to her activism. The film sees her arranging to meet the charismatic Nargis Nehan who has gone very much back to her roots and is busy connecting to women’s groups operating clandestinely in Afghanistan and becoming their lifeline to the outside world.
The film sees the four women watching and suffering from afar the ever-increasing series of clampdowns on women by the Taliban, aimed at depriving girls and women of the right to education and the right to work, and restricting the presence of girls and women in public spaces. No longer in positions of immediate influence, these women are forced to reinvent themselves to continue the fight for a free and just Afghanistan, but it is from a distance and with much of the world seemingly lacking compassion let alone political interest. An Unfinished Journey asks the sobering question what, in the face of such intransigence, these women must do to succeed.
Canada-Greece-France, 2024, 75mins
Dirs: Aeyliya Husain, Amie Williams
Production: CBC Docs, Arte G.E.I.E, HitPlay Productions, Les Films d’ici
International sales: HitPlay Productions, Les Films d’ici
Producers: Nadine Pequeneza, Charlotte Uzu
Scr: Aeyliya Husain
Cinematography: Mrinal Desai
Editor: Jordan Kawai
Music: Thibault Quillet
With: Nargis Nehan, Homaira Ayubi, Nilofar Moradi, Zefnoon Safi
