Do you want your daughter to learn the cello? Nothing’s easier. You offer him private lessons or enroll him in a music school.
In Afghanistan, it’s a bit more complicated. Since the Taliban regained power in 2021, music has been banned altogether, because it is considered “impure”. And this is even more true for the (rare) women who had chosen to learn an instrument, despite the risk involved.
This disturbing reality is told in the documentary Keeping the Music Alivewhich has its world premiere on Saturday at 41e Festival of Films on Art (FIFA).
Its director, the Franco-Tunisian Sarah El Younsi, focuses more particularly on the case of the first exclusively female orchestra in Afghanistan, Zohra, which had its little hour of glory before fleeing the country in disaster, in the fall of 2021. , after the return of the fundamentalists.
“It was supposed to be a film about the story of the emancipation of young Afghan girls. It became a film about the fight for their freedom, for their art, their culture. And also a film on exile, ”says the filmmaker, joined in Paris last Monday.
History in two parts
This two-part story begins in 2010 with the creation of the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan (ANIM) in Kabul. Its founder, Ahmad Naser Sarmast, wants to train a new generation of Afghan musicians, after the fall of the first era Taliban. Although music in Afghanistan is more of a male affair, he opens his door to girls and travels the country in search of female talent.
This vision led in 2015 to the formation of Zohra, an orchestra of 25 musicians experienced in Western instruments, but also Afghan folk, a spectacular departure from tradition.
The most conservative do not see this revolution in a good light. In 2014, a suicide attack killed 1 person and injured 15 – including Ahmad Naser Sarmast – during a concert by ANIM students.
After this attack, the music school becomes one of the best guarded places in Kabul.
As much [l’école] was an oasis of peace and happiness for the students, as it was one of the most protected places. He had greatly strengthened his protection.
Sarah El Younsi
An emblematic figure of a progressive and visionary Afghanistan, the Zohra orchestra became the darling of Western elites. In 2017, the group performed at the Davos Economic Forum, then in half a dozen European cities. Its best students are sponsored by American patrons. Some have scholarships to study abroad. Ahmad Naser Sarmast receives the Polar Prize in Stockholm, equivalent to the Nobel for music.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY FIFA
Ahmad Sarmast and the musicians of Zohra on a European tour, in 2017
But this good momentum was stopped dead in August 2021, when the Taliban regained power and finished driving American troops out of Kabul. The institute has long been in the crosshairs of fundamentalists; it is necessary to pack up as soon as possible, under penalty of reprisals.
From Australia, where he is for personal reasons, the director organizes an emergency escape. The school has 150 students, including several minors. How to evacuate all these people, including teachers and parents, some of whom do not have passports? The episode is about a thriller. But with the help of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Qatari government, 273 people linked to ANIM left in October for Portugal, which offered them asylum. Many remain in Afghanistan, however, out of fear or lack of family support, while the music institute is transformed into a Taliban military base.
bittersweet movie
Keeping the Music Alive is about these young women who had the courage to leave their world – their family sometimes – to pursue their musical education. This professional choice, simple in our eyes, here takes on a dramatic dimension and makes us aware of the battles waged elsewhere in the world for freedoms that we take for granted.
These girls are now safe. They continue to develop artistically. They “keep the music alive”, hence the title of the film.
But they are homesick and feel guilty for being “free”, while some of their sisters are stuck in Afghanistan, where they can neither work nor play an instrument. For the latter, the prospect is no longer limited to marriage and life in a burqa…
Between optimism and disenchantment, Keeping the Music Alive is ultimately a bittersweet film. On the one hand an Afghanistan under a leaden screed, on the other musicians in exile who miraculously continue their apprenticeship.
Glass half empty or half full?
For Sarah El Younsi, the answer is clear: “I want to tell what drives people. If we manage to tell things that bring hope, struggles and battles, they become models, sources of inspiration. But in my eyes, this story brings hope. It’s important to leave room for stories like that…”
Keeping the Music Aliveby Sarah El Younsi, Mandakini Gahlot, presented at Théâtre Outremont, Saturday, March 18, at 3 p.m.