A state of emergency has existed in Afghanistan for more than four decades. This documentary is devoted solely to the voices of the women of this country, who for the first time get to speak about how their lives have changed during this time. Six very different Afghan women take the audience with them on a journey from paradise to hell.

We interview Zohra Yousouf, “Miss Afghanistan 1972”, and Simar Samar, the current Afghan Minister of Human Rights; Heela Najibullah, daughter of the last communist president; as well as activists and members of the Afghan parliament such as Shukria Barakzai. These and other contemporary witnesses make the seemingly endless war real and tangible for the audience; they show how women in particular became victims of the politics of violence. What also becomes clear, however, is the courage and fortitude of Afghan women.

Directors Lucio Mollica, Marcel Mettelsiefen and Mayte Carrasco make us discover a vastly different Afghanistan to that which we know today. With largely unseen archive footage and images, the film shows how girls grew up in the colourful Kabul of the 1960s, how they went to school and participated in society. This “Golden Age” came to an end, however, with the fall of the country’s modern and democratically minded monarch. There followed an ideological war between the communists and Islamists. The Soviet Union tried to take power but even their mighty army was defeated by the Jihadist fighters. When these latter finally took Kabul, a downward spiral began that plunged the lives of Afghan women into darkness. These women now want to take their fate into their own hands. They want their country back.