Tahir Qadiry

The Trouble With Girls – raising daughters as sons in Afghanistan

By Ivana Davidovic “Why do we need to give a girl a boy’s face to give her freedom?”   That is the question asked by Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament, who opted for a radical decision to raise one of her four daughters as a boy, having succumbed to the still prevailing […]

THIRD PARTY SCREENING: The Trouble with Girls

There’s a long tradition in Afghanistan of families with no sons choosing to bring up one of their daughters as a boy. For the girls this means growing up dressed in boy’s clothes, answering to a boy’s name and being allowed the freedoms and privileges Afghan boys enjoy both within the family and outside.

Tahir Qadiry’s film looks at the issue from a number of different perspectives. He spends time with a girl currently growing up as a boy, talks to a young woman who’s still coming to terms with her experience being raised as a boy, seeks the opinion of a mullah and hears from a human rights activist.