“Rule Breakers” Brings Needed Attention To Afghan Girls’ Promise

“Rule Breakers,” a new drama film by Academy Award-winning producer Bill Guttentag, explores the remarkable journey of a teacher named Roya Mahboob, (played by Nikohl Boosheri), and the four determined Afghan girls, or “dreamers,” with whom she forms a successful robotics team in the war-torn nation. Mahboob, who became Afghanistan’s first female tech CEO, was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2013.

Since the decades-long war in Afghanistan ended a couple years ago, Afghan girls and women have been set back to the late 1990s when the Taliban banned them from school, making Afghanistan the only country in the world to enact such a ban. Before this happened, Afghan girls and women were attending schools and colleges, working in parliament, hospitals, the beauty industry, music, and other fields. 

Strict rules with harsh punishments have stunted the progress they made over the past decades when they held high-level positions in Afghan society, leading to “widespread reports” of depression, increased hospital visits for mental health, and recent suicides, according to the U.N.

From Vision to Victory: Building a Robotics Team Amid Conflict

As the film opens with volatile road scenes, the viewers are informed of the dangers looming around a landscape marred by war. 

Mahboob says, “We are looking for four girls who would like to learn about robotics and compete with teams from other countries. It’ll show Afghan girls in a new light.” With this invitation, an urgent search for just the right girls begins.

When the team is finally assembled after many visits to different homes, Mahboob gets to work teaching them robotics, a skill she herself painstakingly learned despite the challenges she faced growing up in Afghanistan. They learn quickly and respect their teacher. The girls overcome every obstacle that comes up in their journey — whether it is visa denials, cultural misunderstandings, lost packages at competitions, or something graver like violent attacks on the road or near their classrooms. 

What made Mahboob’s story so captivating was her steadfastness in organizing these girls to launch a robotics team despite objections not only from society but even from some of the girls’ male family members. At one point, one of the girls’ relatives is angered when he saw TV footage of her signing a male competitor’s jacket. He doesn’t understand this is just a tournament tradition and not a flirtation. 

The serendipitous kindness of strangers helps the girls along their journey. Even when there are not enough tickets for them to board an airplane, other passengers come through and help them out by giving up their own seats on the plane. And the biggest challenge — losing a key robot at the time of the competition — is solved when a kindly Latino car shop owner takes up their cause and watches in awe as they rearrange parts in his junkyard to build a new robot.

Engineering Solutions: How Afghan Girls Created Lifesaving Technology

The most important accomplishment the team made was creating a robot that could detect landmines. For decades, Afghan children have died because of landmines hidden around the country. They have become paralyzed and lost limbs.

This showed the value of education when it has a real and practical agenda. Their teacher was not wasting their time because the girls’ inventions mattered locally for the preservation and safety of their country.

“Rule Breakers” marks a significant transition forward for Afghan cinema in the United States — a refreshing new look at the country since the heart-wrenching book “Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini captivated American audiences. It comes at a key time when Afghan women’s powerful voices have been drowned out by American politics after the end of the longest war in American history, which ended in a botched withdrawal.

What a waste that hundreds of thousands of Afghan girls are locked up when they could be advancing Afghanistan forward. 

Global Solidarity: When Women Across Borders Support Each Other

The most meaningful moment in this movie was when the Afghan girls interacted with the Vietnamese girls team, who subtly shared that Vietnam was also full of landmines, implying that the landmine detection device would help them too. This showed the devastation war has left on Asian countries beyond Afghanistan, and the deep solidarity the Vietnamese community has shown the Afghan community.

Violence and war help no one. And the Taliban’s poor decision to further repress girls’ advancements to scientific innovation will only lead to brain drain and economic decline for a deeply troubled nation.  

The girls’ amazing reception at international tournaments showed the deep promise and untapped potential of Afghan girls and women: They are brilliant and shine when given an education. Imagine if more were given a chance.

Released on March 7, “Rule Breakers” can be watched on the Angel app.

All images courtesy of Angel Films.