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On December 2, Scandinavia House presents a special screening and director talk of a Finnish qualifier for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards: the powerful documentary The Secret Reading Club of Kabul. *Directors Shakiba Adil & Elina Hirvonen will be present for a film Q&A.*In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, and speak freely, a group of young women make a radical choice: they read. Inspired by Anne Frank, they secretly form a reading club and begin writing their own diaries — not as victims, but as witnesses. The Secret Reading Club becomes an act of resistance: documenting their lives as a timeless defense of humanity, beyond borders or eras.
Partially filmed by the women themselves, The Secret Reading Club of Kabul is an intimate and confidential testimony to the power of art to keep hope and humanism alive. It is also a moving declaration of love for literature and for the act of reading itself. The story is interwoven with director Shakiba Adil’s own journey. As a girl, she grew up under the first Taliban regime, and after the fall of the Taliban, she became the first woman to appear on Afghan television. After being forced to flee her homeland twice, she has now dedicated her film to the new generation facing the same oppression she herself has endured.
Finland/Norway, 2026 | 95 min | In Dari, Pashto, English w/ English subtitles
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58 Park Ave, New York, NY, United States, New York 10016
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