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Love Crimes of Kabul’: Meet the Sex Outlaws of Afghanistan
Love Crimes of Kabul’: Meet the Sex Outlaws of Afghanistan
'Love Crimes of Kabul': Meet the Sex Outlaws of Afghanistan - Speakeasy - WSJ
Filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian says Westerners haven’t gotten the real story about the life of women in Afghanistan.
“Westerners assume, whether unconsciously or consciously, that there’s this nation where the women are just sitting around being miserable, quiet, downtrodden, sad,” she says, remembering her time in Afghanistan. “You forget that these are human beings. No one just sits around being quiet and sad, anywhere.”
Iranian-born Eshaghian, the Emmy-nominated director of the 2008 documentary “Be Like Others,” recently returned to her native Middle East to shoot her newest film, “Love Crimes of Kabul.” The HBO-produced documentary premieres tonight on the premium cable network.
The film is set inside Kabul’s Badum Bagh prison, where three women are held awaiting trial for offenses related to sexual transgressions. Their alleged crimes: one girl ran away from home, another had premarital sex with her fiance, a third is accused of the same.
“It’s a very controlled society,” Eshaghian said in a recent interview. “The assumption is that if you run away, you must have committed a sexual act. It’s their version of a girl running away, smoking crack and sleeping with half the neighborhood. Everything there is just much more G-rated.”
Watching women in jail could make for a depressing documentary. But the film is light and open, and the three women at the center are surprisingly bubbly and often even comic in their acceptance of their conservative Muslim society’s harsh response to their crimes of passion.
“In societies where you live a really dark existence, you’ll meet people and they’re laughing, cracking up,” Eshaghian said. “I think that’s just the human spirit responding to where it finds itself.”
Perhaps the strongest spirit in Eshaghian’s film is that of Kareema, a young girl who has sex before marriage with Firuz, a man she falls in love with. After she discovers that he has no intention to marry her even after he impregnates her, Kareema turns herself in to the police. Both she and Firuz are imprisoned for their crime. To avoid further shame and jail time, Firuz is forced to marry Kareema.
“Kareema’s kind of strength is not uncommon in societies with limitations,” Eshaghian said. “Given limitations, women become stronger.”
It was a dangerous shoot for the New York City-based filmmaker. Although her previous film, “Be Like Others,” explored the topic of men seeking sex change operations to become women in modern Iran, Eshaghian’s Iranian heritage made filming there less difficult.
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, however, she said she found filming tough and exhausting. The crew swept in and out for a quick five week period; early in the shoot, a suicide bomber blew up the gate in front of her crew’s hotel.
“It’s a tough society,” Eshaghian said. “People are traumatized and impatient.”
But the war wasn’t always on the minds of the people she filmed, most of whom were members of the country’s deeply religious underclass. A showing of the film at June’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival prompted a lot of comments from audience members curious about the ongoing U.S. conflict in the region.
Eshaghian was amused when she heard these kinds of questions.
“Do you think anybody in this film looks like they give a s— about the war?” Eshaghian said, laughing. “Unless it hits them on the head, they don’t care about the war.”
Still, Eshaghian said that her return to the Middle East reminds her of how different social interactions are there than in New York City. Widespread government corruption and inefficiency in many countries in the region promote a different kind of social safety network, she said.
“Relationships between people are just so much warmer there than they are here,” she said. “Here, I think everyone is so organized and systematized, that we think we don’t need each other. We can just depend on the system. There, because you have to depend on each other, they give more. It’s more human, something is less robotic about it. When I go back there, I feel more human, my spirit feels better. Something gets lifted, and I feel human.”
Filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian says Westerners haven’t gotten the real story about the life of women in Afghanistan.
“Westerners assume, whether unconsciously or consciously, that there’s this nation where the women are just sitting around being miserable, quiet, downtrodden, sad,” she says, remembering her time in Afghanistan. “You forget that these are human beings. No one just sits around being quiet and sad, anywhere.”
Iranian-born Eshaghian, the Emmy-nominated director of the 2008 documentary “Be Like Others,” recently returned to her native Middle East to shoot her newest film, “Love Crimes of Kabul.” The HBO-produced documentary premieres tonight on the premium cable network.
The film is set inside Kabul’s Badum Bagh prison, where three women are held awaiting trial for offenses related to sexual transgressions. Their alleged crimes: one girl ran away from home, another had premarital sex with her fiance, a third is accused of the same.
“It’s a very controlled society,” Eshaghian said in a recent interview. “The assumption is that if you run away, you must have committed a sexual act. It’s their version of a girl running away, smoking crack and sleeping with half the neighborhood. Everything there is just much more G-rated.”
Watching women in jail could make for a depressing documentary. But the film is light and open, and the three women at the center are surprisingly bubbly and often even comic in their acceptance of their conservative Muslim society’s harsh response to their crimes of passion.
“In societies where you live a really dark existence, you’ll meet people and they’re laughing, cracking up,” Eshaghian said. “I think that’s just the human spirit responding to where it finds itself.”
Perhaps the strongest spirit in Eshaghian’s film is that of Kareema, a young girl who has sex before marriage with Firuz, a man she falls in love with. After she discovers that he has no intention to marry her even after he impregnates her, Kareema turns herself in to the police. Both she and Firuz are imprisoned for their crime. To avoid further shame and jail time, Firuz is forced to marry Kareema.
“Kareema’s kind of strength is not uncommon in societies with limitations,” Eshaghian said. “Given limitations, women become stronger.”
It was a dangerous shoot for the New York City-based filmmaker. Although her previous film, “Be Like Others,” explored the topic of men seeking sex change operations to become women in modern Iran, Eshaghian’s Iranian heritage made filming there less difficult.
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, however, she said she found filming tough and exhausting. The crew swept in and out for a quick five week period; early in the shoot, a suicide bomber blew up the gate in front of her crew’s hotel.
“It’s a tough society,” Eshaghian said. “People are traumatized and impatient.”
But the war wasn’t always on the minds of the people she filmed, most of whom were members of the country’s deeply religious underclass. A showing of the film at June’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival prompted a lot of comments from audience members curious about the ongoing U.S. conflict in the region.
Eshaghian was amused when she heard these kinds of questions.
“Do you think anybody in this film looks like they give a s— about the war?” Eshaghian said, laughing. “Unless it hits them on the head, they don’t care about the war.”
Still, Eshaghian said that her return to the Middle East reminds her of how different social interactions are there than in New York City. Widespread government corruption and inefficiency in many countries in the region promote a different kind of social safety network, she said.
“Relationships between people are just so much warmer there than they are here,” she said. “Here, I think everyone is so organized and systematized, that we think we don’t need each other. We can just depend on the system. There, because you have to depend on each other, they give more. It’s more human, something is less robotic about it. When I go back there, I feel more human, my spirit feels better. Something gets lifted, and I feel human.”
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