In Her Hands Review: The Fall Of Kabul Through Zarifa Ghafari’s Eyes

In Her Hands is a new documentary that has been released on Netflix. The documentary follows the life of Zarifa Ghafari, the youngest female mayor of Afghanistan, months before the Taliban regime captured Kabul. 

The docufilm is directed by Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen and produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton along with Juan Camilo Cruz and Johnathan Schaerf.

The Netflix synopsis of the documentary:

As Western forces withdraw, Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor braves mortal danger to lead a fight for education for the next generation of Afghans.

–In Her Hands Review Contains Minor Spoilers–

The documentary starts in January 2020, 19 months before Kabul was captured by the Taliban regime when the United States government negotiated with the Taliban in Qatar. It shows Zarifa Ghafari communicating with a huge crowd and pursuing them to go to schools and receive education, which will help them to rebuild their country again. In many instances, she was seen urging parents to send their children, especially the girls, to schools so they can have a future.

Zarifa also talks about the struggles that she faced while she was receiving her education and how her father was against it, but she still pursued it successfully. Even though her story is extremely inspiring, we did not get to know anything about her on a deeper level. The directors did not show her achievements and her various work while she was still the mayor of the country; they only tried to portray her as the lone woman working among a sea of men.

Some of the instances often felt superficial as she was seen donating food and clothes to the poor women, which looked more like a photo op but nothing about her plans, dreams, and hopes of how she wanted to improve the country’s situation. The documentary’s main focus was on how unsafe the country was for her as a woman mayor and how unsafe it was for a woman to survive in the country overall.

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The focus soon shifted from Zarifa to the 36-year-old commander of the Taliban, Musafer. They followed him through the roads to the areas where only the Taliban regime existed. He talked about their beliefs and wants and the changes they wanted to bring to the country under their regime and also explored the events in their daily lives.

It is still being determined what the directors wanted to convey when they spent a fair amount of time with the Taliban and not enough focus on the life of Zarifa. Everything shown and said about her in the documentary was surface-level. They also needed to explore the relationships of Zarifa with the people around her. The fallout between her and one of her closest confidants was also not inspected thoroughly, and many questions were left unanswered.

Further, into the documentary, it shows how the Taliban ultimately gained control over Kabul on August 15, 2021, after the United States pulled out its soldiers. Fear and panic spread throughout the country.

The docufilm will take the viewer through the various events that occurred in Afghanistan during the acquisition of Kabul by the Taliban. It feels like witnessing the events unfold in real-time as we get first-hand footage of everything happening in the country during that time. It will be an extremely illuminating experience for the people unaware of the ongoing political situation in Afghanistan.

In Her Hands Final Thoughts

The documentary failed to focus on who it was about. Zarifa Ghafani is a lot more than the youngest female mayor of Afghanistan. She is also an adequate entrepreneur and an outspoken advocate of women’s rights, and the directors could have given us a deeper perspective of her life and struggles. The documentary is still informative and will take you through the fall of Kabul.

In Her Hands is now streaming on Netflix.

Did you watch In Her Hands? Let us know in the comments below!

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