From Zero Dark Thirty to Homeland and news reports, Afghanistan is frequently depicted through a familiar visual and auditory vocabulary: fast-paced shaky camera footage, violence and chaos, torture, and the markers of breaking news. In the Room, a documentary that premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October, pierces through with a gentler approach, subverting expectations. Early in the festival, director Brishkay Ahmed and I met over Zoom for a 40-minute conversation about using sensory memory and reenactment to tell this story, her profoundly moving on-screen conversations, and how the struggle of Afghan women is intertwined with the rest of the globe. One thing is very clear from the documentary: This is not a breaking news story, and Ahmed—who has directed numerous documentaries, films, and written plays—worked to avoid those aesthetics completely. “I did not want it to look like breaking news. I didn’t want it to have that palette,” she told me. 

By placing herself in front of the camera in the film, In the Room becomes as much an autobiography of Ahmed’s coming-of-age and embracing of her identity in Vancouver as it is a weaving of five Afghan women’s stories leading up to August 2021, when the Taliban seized control of the Afghan government. With the help of thoughtful production design and a narrative that prioritizes human stories over a historical chronology, In the Room is a nuanced but direct look at the resilience of five Afghan women: Nelofer Pazira-Fisk, a renowned actress and author; Vida Samadzai, 2003 Miss Afghanistan beauty pageant contestant; Sahar Parniyan, an actress who worked with Ahmed on the set of a television series; Mozhdah Jamalzadah, a singer and activist; and Shogofa Sediqi, the former news director of Zan TV, Afghanistan’s first all-women’s television network. 

Each interview occurs in a completely different “room,” meant to invoke each woman’s personality and story. In the first interview, Pazira-Fisk walks a red carpet, evoking her experience at the world premiere of Safar-e Ghandehar at Cannes Film Festival in 2001, a film that received widespread attention after September 11. A young Ahmed, riddled with shame about her identity, watched in awe as Pazira-Fisk represented Afghan women on the world stage while touring the film to 22 different film festivals wearing the same red dress each time as a form of protest. “I wanted each woman to be represented through their energy, their persohona, who they are; that’s why each room has a different look and feel and energy to it,” Ahmed says. 

In the Room was unexpectedly the highlight of the dozen or so films I saw at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It won the Audience Award for its programming category, up against buzzy films on the festival circuit like Pillion and Blue Moon. It’s not a total surprise—the documentary is profoundly moving, and ends on a note of hope and optimism, two emotions in rare supply in today’s doomscrolling nihilism. Yes, the documentary is about the Afghan diaspora, the current dire state of women’s rights in Afghanistan, the ways in which Afghan women in the public sphere are working countercurrent to pre-existing narratives and cultural perceptions of Afghanistan. But it’s also about healing the young, tender parts of ourselves that have been traumatized by conditions beyond our control, so that we can move forward with resilience and hopefully create a better world along the way.

In the Room is free to stream as of Tuesday, November 25, on the National Film Board of Canada website (nfb.ca) and the NFB app.

What has it been like doing press on this documentary and reflecting on it as a finished product?

The press, honestly, is a little tiring. But I also know it's important because a lot of people put their time and effort into In the Room, and the five women are really important. I'm committed, I'm going to do all the interviews, I'm going to push through. There are so many kids coming to Canada from war-torn countries, and they look at the news and see a version of themselves that doesn't make them feel very good. And they are not that, and their country is not that, their people are not just that. I don't want other kids to be another Brishkay and rebel and hate their identity, feel shame for it, because of what the media constantly shows. So I feel really good. I have a really amazing team in the National Film Board of Canada supporting me and the film crew. They also need a shout out for their good work. 

Why select the documentary as a medium to tell this story?

For me, this whole story came after 2021. I was very sad. I didn't know how to deal with the aftermath of what happened in Afghanistan again. I was simmering. I was writing a play, writing a screenplay, gathering thoughts. By pure coincidence, Shirley Vercruysse and Teri Snelgrove from the National Film Board reached out to me. They do a lot of creative work; their documentary is not the breaking news type. So that's where the idea came in, and there's really no other place to take an alternative approach to storytelling in Canada for funding and support. They were open with the offer of doing a bit of mixed media, bringing in sensory memory reenactment. I was able to put a bit of everything that I am: narrative filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, all that, and worse. I put myself in it.

The documentary is rooted in your perspective: What made you decide to actually place yourself in the frame of the documentary, as opposed to staying behind the camera?

Because it's so personal, the connection that I have with the women, I didn't want it to feel like an interview. That's what I think it feels like when I'm sitting behind the camera rather than two people sitting across from each other and really just having a conversation like sisters. The moment that's a conversation, then I have to insert myself in it, right? During filming, I surrendered. You just have to surrender. You have to not care. There was a moment in editing where I was like: Can we have less of me? I can't look at myself. My editor reminded me that it's not about you as a person. It's about the story, and she said it's working when we include more of you. So I surrendered.

You share a story with Nelofer Pazira-Fisk about coming into your heritage and identity after seeing her in the 2001 film Kandahar. How did you reach out to her and why was it important to include her conversation?

Nelofer was the first woman who grabbed the world's attention. Safar-e Ghandehar went wild because it was during the time when the Taliban were doing the worst things possible inside Afghanistan, and she looked like the girl on the National Geographic cover, which is such a famous image. They latched onto that, and she burst through. I had never met her, and I didn't know the story that she shares in the documentary. But she was the first person that I saw on TV that just made me feel like, Wow. Look at her. She's not the woman that has the gun on her head in the blue burqa. She's strong and smart, and the world is shining a light on her. 

I was nervous about reaching her because she's very renowned across the globe. She's incredibly smart. I reached out to her on Twitter, and I think she responded because of my connection with the National Film Board of Canada, because she had worked with them before. She said, maybe. I said, I promise you, it's not going to be a breaking news film. And then she said, Okay, let's have a talk. I think she herself was tired of that approach. We brought her here, and she didn't ask a lot of questions. She knew that it was going to be a sensory memory experience, but she didn't know she was going to walk down the red carpet. She just knew to arrive in the red dress. 

What I kept coming back to while watching the documentary is the power of the visual image. The way our culture has synthesized information about Afghanistan through film, beauty pageants, television. What is your relationship with the visual image and its political dimensions?

There is this interesting factor which all the women talk about. They were, in a sense, popped up and broke through popular culture. There’s this cultural imperialism net around them. They represent Western views of what you should be, which is also what I was attracted to growing up, because that's what was celebrated around me. They were caught up in that too, but for them, it was a vehicle to bring attention to Afghanistan. The Miss Earth pageant, the old Baywatch days of the red bathing suit, or Cannes film festival, this James Bond looking girl. Of course, those are images that grab the attention of the Western world, because that's the kind of women they celebrate. And that’s who I was looking at. But they all kind of felt betrayed by that too. Like this commodification of their identity, which sold papers, sold clicks, sold tickets. 

It didn’t go into the interview, but Nelofer’s film sold more than, I think, Nicole Kidman’s biggest Hollywood film in that year. Makeup companies were coming to her, asking her to be the next face of Lancôme, and she's like, No thank you, I'm good. All the women understood they will lift you up if you represent what they represent, and you are removed from the spotlight if you differ. Every human being can so easily be commodified right now. I hope people pick that up in the film. Be careful, because it's very easy to get caught up in that and lose yourself. I certainly did. I say in the film, I sit across a woman that 15 years ago I thought was different from me, Shogofa in her headscarf. I was like, I'm not that girl. And actually, at the end, I realized how much I love her and how much of her lives in me. 

Can you talk a bit more about the sensory experience aspects of the documentary? Did you have any reservations about how triggering it could be for the women?

I did. Teri Snelgrove, my producer at NFB, offered a counselor to be available just in case. We had a conversation with each of the women and told them the gist: We're going to be putting you back in the room, in that time and space. Not all the details, right? They all declined knowing the questions ahead. They all declined to see the rough cut, even. 

Shogofa is the person I took a little bit more caution with and actually told her the steps of what she was going to do, which is you are going to relive those moments that you did just before you left Afghanistan. And I know those moments because I was with you on the phone as you were going through them, as you are packing up. I said, I know those items are going to be there, and your office is going to be recreated in the same way that you told me it looked like on those days. And are you ready to walk through that moment? And she said, Fine, no problem.

She came to the set. She looked at it, she walked around. And then, of course, sensory memory, right? We had to stop because it got very emotional for her. But I didn't want to use that in the film. I thought that would not be fair. So we took a break, and then we did it again. During the interview, I felt guilty. So I had to apologize to her, and her response to my apology really surprised me, because she took it in. But then she said, Nope. People should see it. People should see it because they should see what Afghan women go through, what they feel. But I just felt like including the part where she actually broke down would not be necessary.

There is a bit of a turning point in the documentary with Sahar Parniyan, where the interview subject is now someone whose story is intertwined with yours. Can you talk a bit about the show you were working on at the time and your relationship with her? Obviously as a TV critic this is of particular interest to me.

The show we worked on together was very much a TV procedural [in Afghanistan]. It was called Between You and Me, and it's about two brothers from different mothers with the same father. One is an attorney general, and the other one is a drug lord, so they're on opposite sides of the law. Sahar was cast as a journalist who has to go through each case. It was a police legal action drama. And I literally cast her because she just stood out. At that time, I was not very considerate to her. I was really trying to make her look like the women we see on Law & Order, and I didn't realize that was not exactly safe for her. That was an error in my judgment. Two actresses were murdered on another show of hers, but then she was getting attacked also because of our show as well, so we had to get her out. And she got out. 

You don't feel good as a director when that happens. That was a big lesson on how I [would] frame someone from then on, and that you have to take care about someone that you put on screen. I know in the film, she says, Don't worry Brishkay, I trusted you. But she was really young [then], and I'm telling to wear tighter pants and more fitted tops, to remove the head scarf. Does she have the power to say no to me at that time? I don't think so. There was a power dynamic. She would take the bus and taxi back home, which was very far, and I would be escorted in a fancy car back to my hotel. Like those things just didn't register to me. 

It’s so tough because you were inserted into a pre-existing hierarchy of television production. Would you consider returning to television directing, but from a new perspective?

I would love to, but even in Canada right now, there is this stratified society within the film set. It's very class-oriented. I just don't think I'm that person anymore. I think I'm the kind of person that would like to now sit with the background artist and ask, How do you feel in that outfit? Instead of having the third assistant director do it. So I would return, but in my own terms and in my own way, and not within that kind of a system.

I would love to see what your version of a television set is.

I think it would look a little bit more along the lines of a documentary film set. Where there's more care. Yes, our art is important. Yes, the work is important. Human beings are way more important. And the work gets better. 

You have an “aha” moment in your interview with Sahar: That the pain of Afghan women, what is happening now with the Taliban, can help someone else, that it’s not about weakness. Have you reflected more on that since the documentary?

Yeah, I journaled about it. Until then, I wasn't really connecting the Afghan women's challenges and fight to the globe. It wasn't really happening for me there. Sahar is so light-hearted and funny [that] we never had a deep conversation in that sense. And she’s like, Women around the world can learn from Afghan women. Suddenly, it’s like, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, this victim complex that I have — it’s not. It was a very healing moment, because it shifted something for me that was very profound. She's such a sort of an empowered human, being a martial arts artist from a young age — the spiritual, philosophical quotes and things that come with that art form. That's the reason she knows that. It's innate to her. She doesn't have a victim complex.

The documentary ends on a powerfully optimistic note. But I’m not feeling very optimistic about the sociopolitical regression in the West. Are you seeing warning signs with where things are heading in this part of the world?

I feel you. I know. We are an hour away down south, and what's going on there is a little too close. I have to say that what Shogofa said to me at the end has become a mantra. She says: Tyrants do not last. History has shown us. Mussolini did not stay in power. Hitler did not stay in power. Trump will not stay in power. Other right-wing fascists with horrible agendas all across the world will not stay in power. They might have their time. But she's right. The fact of the matter is, there's so many of us that are being oppressed, and actions are taken around us. It's not just women: LGBTQIA+ community members, men of colour, Indigenous people. So there's a very small group that want to control all of us, but there is the all of us. I'm seeing all of us unite. There is this camaraderie that's happening. We are linking arms. As much as they love to divide us, because they know, if all come together, they are powerless. That’s where I have hope. I know it because I look at you, and you’re from the queer community, I’m from the Afghan women community, and we're both equally scared and worried – but we're united. You're interviewing me, I'm chatting with you. We don't see differences in each other. We see the fight the same way.

What are you watching, reading, or consuming lately that is fueling you?

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, because I need a bit of joy. She's a strong, funny female character breaking down boundaries and pushing through. I'm also a big musical theater fan, and so I’m watching to fuel myself with joy and happiness so that I can have the strength to challenge and be a bad bitch. In order for me to be a bad bitch and to stand up, I have to fuel myself with joy and energy. I'm reading lots of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, and listening to Fiona Apple’s “Under the Table.”

What is additional reading you recommend to anyone reading this?

Sara Ahmed's The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way. It's time we be killjoys.