Sandra Schäfer & Elfe Brandenburger, 2008. Afghanistan, Germany. vo Arabic. s English. 71’
A girl decides to live as a boy, in order to evade the work prohibition for women introduced by the Taliban. As an action film director who works full-time as a police woman, in her films she plays the role of a superheroine who fights against corruption, child kidnapping and sexual harassment. The film deals with performative strategies to undermine the rigid gender norms in Afghan society: on the level of cinematographic stagings, in political work and in everyday life. The protagonists of “Passing the Rainbow” include a teacher who is also an actress, a policewoman whose second job is working as an action film director, an activist of the organisation RAWA which advocates for the radical separation of state and religion, a girls’ theatre group in Kabul, and Maleka who lives as a boy to earn a living for her family. The directors show excerpts of films from the history of Afghan cinema, accompany the actresses during shooting and stage new scenes together with them. The local actors are co-producers and a corrective to Western perspectives. “Passing the Rainbow” is a film staging scenes from the actresses’ daily lives, reflecting on gender relations and opening new areas of action in fiction.