Jennifer Lawrence reveals troubling inspiration behind new movie ‘Bread and Roses’
The Hunger Games actor Jennifer Lawrence and her producing partner Justine Ciarrocchi made a powerful appearance at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend. The pair attended to promote their company’s inaugural documentary feature titled Bread and Roses. The candid movie offers a poignant and distressing glimpse into the lives of women in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban.
Following two decades of American occupation, the nation experienced another upheaval as it once again fell under the insurgent group’s control. The Taliban duly began to curtail fundamental rights for women, depriving them of basic freedoms such as the ability to work, walk around in public without a male companion, and access to education. The documentary sheds light on these troubling realities.
“It all just collapsed and a matter of days,” told Variety. “I was watching this from America, where Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned. We felt helpless and frustrated with how to get these stories off of the news cycle and into people’s psyches. To help people be galvanised and care about the plight of these women.”
During the early stages of establishing their production company, Excellent Cadaver, Jennifer Lawrence, and Justine Ciarrocchi began collaborating with Sahra Mani, a renowned Afghan filmmaker known for her work on A Thousand Girls Like Me.
The film predominantly features footage captured by the three main subjects themselves. The hostile situation in Afghanistan prevented both film crews and Sahra Mani, who happened to be abroad at the time, from safely entering the country. The completed documentary touched the audience’s hearts and moved them to tears during its highly anticipated world premiere on the Croisette.
“The director was given footage from women using their cell phones; there was one trusted camera person that was used occasionally,” Lawrence said.
“Sahra had been out of Kabul for about a month by the time it fell, she was in France. The great news now is that all of our protagonists are safely out of Afghanistan. We wanted to make sure that these women were safe and that we were being thoughtful while also trying to shape a film. That was a wild set of responsibilities for us and a very new experience,” added Ciarrocchi.
Lawrence said watching the abuse women and children suffer on the streets for protesting was “devastating” to watch as a mother, “You just want to do anything you can to change it.”
“One of our protagonists, Sharifa, we had to witness the tedium of her life. How it would feel to be a woman who is in the workplace and enjoying freedom in her city with her friends — to witness her cabin fever was painful,” Ciarrocchi said.
“It makes me think about when I was little, how much I hated going to school,” Lawrence added. “We take for granted that education is a way out for these women. [Our subject] had all of that stripped away and can’t even go outside without a chaperone. It’s a right to have as a human, to have something to do every day and be productive in society.”
“There is not much separating us from these other countries,” Lawrence concluded. “Democracy is all we have. and it’s sliding back. We have to keep our eye on the ball, which is individual freedoms.”
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