Sahraa Karimi Is Making a Film About Her Escape from Afghanistan
“Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” filmmaker Sahraa Karimi is among the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled Afghanistan. Along with her family, she managed to escape first to Istanbul and then make her way to Kyiv. According to The...
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“Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” filmmaker Sahraa Karimi is among the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled Afghanistan. Along with her family, she managed to escape first to Istanbul and then make her way to Kyiv. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Karimi will recount this experience for her next feature film. “Flight from Kabul” will chronicle the 40 hours between the Taliban’s invasion of Kabul on August 15 and Karimi’s eventual safe passage to Turkey and Ukraine.
“I want to show to the world that it was a normal day, everything was normal. And then it all collapsed,” the director told THR. “In the news, people only saw the bigger story of the crowd. But there were many individual stories in those 40 hours, stories I saw myself, that I experienced.”
Karimi captured parts of her flight on social media, including moments of her running through Kabul, warning other civilians that the Taliban was coming.
Karimi revealed that, though she is still processing the trauma of her escape, she feels that integrating it into her art is the best way for her to move forward. “It was difficult, and it is still difficult for me to remember that time,” she explained. “But last week I sat down and looked at myself in the mirror and said: ‘Sahraa are you going to be sad all your life? This is the reality: you have this trauma and the only way to forget this trauma, at least for a while, is to write it and to make it into a film.’”
“Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” producer Katayoon Shahabi will produce “Flight from Kabul,” as will Slovak Film and Television Academy president Wanda Adamik Hrycova. The latter helped Karimi get out of Afghanistan and secure passage to Ukraine. Karimi studied in Slovakia and holds Slovak citizenship.
Karimi, the first female president of the Afghan Film Organization, previously directed docs “Parlika” and “Afghan Women Behind the Wheel.” She recently took part in a Venice Film Festival panel discussing how the international film community can help artists who are still in Afghanistan. “All of you, don’t forget about Afghanistan. We have talent, we are hardworking, we have stories to tell to the world,” she said. “We can be part of the world community… we tried so much. We shouldn’t be forgotten.”
