Rule Breakers

Bluesky

“The first time I touched a computer,” says Roya (Nikohl Boosheri), “it was like a light in the darkness.”

It’s hard to explain to younger people in most parts of the world, now, what it was like to be without access to data, to information and ideas from outside one’s own head – to have to rely on in-person conversations when there might be few educated people around, or to be dependent on books when bookshops and libraries were closed at least a third of the time. When computers first started to open up new possibilities, few countries ensured that there would be equal access to them. In the UK in the Eighties, boys – generally those from privileged backgrounds, who could make a good impression on the teachers – were the ones given the chance to learn about them at school. Girls, if they really pressed for it, might be given the chance to watch from a polite distance. For the first two decades of the 21st Century, in Afghanistan, the same type of segregation prevailed. Rule Breakers dramatises the events that changed that and, when the Taliban eventually loses power, as all tyrannical regimes do, may still exert enough of a grip on the public imagination to give girls and women another chance.

As a rule, nothing gets kids as excited about learning something as telling them it’s not allowed. Roya’s childhood, spent peering into computer classes through windows, is brightened by a father who tells her that anything boys can do, girls can do too. 18 years later, she’s is told by a dismissive but naïf headteacher that a computer class for girls will only be allowed if she can get 70% of all pupils at the school where she teaches to sign a petition in support of it. The younger generation does not let her down. The class overflows, but still, she’s aware that it’s a drop in the ocean considering the level of ignorance across the country as a whole. How can she make a bigger impression – how can she show the whole country what girls are capable of? She needs something that people can connect with visually. Something spectacular. She needs some robot action.

Though it’s competently produced, Rule Breakers does not, in itself, break any rules. Barely anything happens in it that is not predictable, or that succeeds in distinguishing it at the level of small team overcomes the odds story. Furthermore, despite an initial promise that it will show us the people behind the veils, it leaves most of its characters sadly under-developed. That said, it is an important subject, and, well, it does have some cool robots, which will be enough for many viewers. It also has a strong central performance from Boosheri and good support from Sara Malal Rowe, the standout among the girls.

At its most interesting when the robot-building team is in Herat, its hometown, the film addresses aspects of Afghan life not always noticed by outsiders. The familiar issues are there, like fathers’ worries over the safety and marriageability of girls who become public figures, but we also see how many men quietly seek to empower girls and to build their confidence. We see the clothes that girls wore by choice before the chadari was enforced, and their love of music, the dancing they enjoy together and, more generally, the fun shared by friends. On this level the film achieves its aim, reminding us that there are human beings – some 14 million of them – now consigned to second class status under Taliban rule.

We also see direct illustrations of the threat that Taliban enforcers pose, in scenes which sit awkwardly alongside the lighter stuff, as they should, and remind us of what’s at stake. There is real life footage of the Jawadia Mosque bombing too, though it would have been useful if some effort had been made to explain the sectarian politics associated with this, rather than leaving viewers to assume that the Taliban was responsible. Afghanistan is a culturally complex place and ignoring this for the sake of narrative simplicity risks feeding problematic Western myths.

If you’re a fan of underdog stories, you will find the film emotionally satisfying. It’s warm-hearted throughout, repeatedly observing that most people, if given the chance, will make an effort to help others. Though it would be easy to watch it from a melancholy perspective, thinking about the world that these girls would, one way or another, have to face in their future, it also celebrates the struggle for freedom for its own sake, and the importance of freedom, joy and creativity even if they are only temporary things. The girls’ achievements ultimately go far beyond the international competitions in which they are involved, and at a personal level, the thrill of their experiences, of knowing what they could accomplish, can never be taken away from them.