The Breadwinner

There may be no more appropriate a time for Cartoon Saloon’s The Breadwinner to land in theaters than now. We’re close to a watershed cultural moment in which we’re talking more openly about matters of sexual misconduct, of misogynist entitlement, of patriarchal oppression. As victims of harassment by powerful men in the entertainment industry (and elsewhere) come forward to tell their stories, discourse concerning ingrained and systemic injustice against their gender has, perhaps, led to a slow shift toward believing rather than rejecting the victims’ stories. (Granted, “slow” is generous—“glacial” may be more precise.)
That may sound like a lot of pressure to put on a single film, even a film as beautiful and assuredly made as The Breadwinner. But in 2017’s assemblage of women-led movies, Nora Twomey’s first solo directorial effort occupies a position of esteem: It’s the third feature Cartoon Saloon has released to date. Its last two, The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014), were Academy Award nominees, and one of its executive producers is Angelina Jolie. (You could pair Jolie’s latest film, the Netflix-backed First They Killed My Father, with The Breadwinner as a double feature, despite their obvious differences in scale and geography.) The prestige buttressing Twomey’s work feels downright poetic.
The Breadwinner is more than the sum of its backers, of course. Having worked on both The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, Twomey has taken a different tack than her Cartoon Saloon cohort, Tomm Moore, departing the mythology-rich shores of Ireland for the mountains of Afghanistan, focusing on the region’s own folklore against the backdrop of Taliban rule. The film is based on Deborah Ellis’ 2000 novel of the same name, the story of a young girl named Parvana who disguises herself as a boy to provide for her family after her father is seized by the Taliban. Being a woman in public is bad for your health in Kabul. So is educating women. Parvana (Saara Chaudry) understands the dire circumstances her father’s arrest forces upon her family, and recognizes the danger of hiding in plain sight to feed them. Need outweighs risk.
So she adopts a pseudonym on advice from her friend, Shauzia (Soma Bhatia), who is in the very same position as Parvana, and goes about the business of learning how to play-act as a dude in a world curated by dudes. As much as The Breadwinner emphasizes women’s plight living under the heel of male dominion, the film’s portrait of gender inequality is multi-dimensional. The trouble isn’t only that women in Parvana’s world have limited rights, it’s that men have an overabundance of them. Being a man literally opens doors. Shauzia teaches Parvana a valuable early lesson in the proper application of bravado and swagger: Boys are entitled to free passage anywhere they like, as long as they carry themselves with proper self-assurance. Having control over your identity is nice and all, but it’s a gift to go as you please without fear of violent reprisal.