‘The Secret Reading Club of Kabul’ Follows Young Afghan Women, Inspired by Anne Frank, Defying the Taliban: “They Want to Be Heard and Seen”

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, or speak freely, a group of young women risk their lives to form a secret reading circle And inspired by Anne Frank’s experiences in 1940s Amsterdam, they start to write their own diaries. For these women, a dystopia is reality. Now, they are sharing it with the world in The Secret Reading Club of Kabul, a documentary directed by Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen and partially filmed by the women themselves.

The film, described as “an intimate … testimony to the power of art to keep hope and humanism alive,” world premieres on Monday, March 16, in the Nordic:DOX competition program of the 23rd edition of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX.