Thread Laurie Chock

As if living in one of the world’s most troubled countries wasn’t bad enough; imagine it when you’re a woman. In Afghanistan, young girls can get acid in their faces just because they don’t want to give up school. They even have to ask permission when they want to see a doctor because of a toothache. They need a man to affirm the simplest detail about their lives - a legitimate master in the form of a father, a brother or a son.

Thread shows us many such stories, but also much more. Not only is their culture chaining up these women, but deep down they are bound by another, more universal barrier: there is no such thing as independence without money.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel however. The film follows a group of Afghan women getting help from an American women’s organization, which tries to give them the starting point to earn their own living through embroidery. We watch as they reach for an American dream, and follow them from the country of nightmares to New York. The consequences of this journey are however unclear, as are the motivations behind it. Will it remain another missionary move, clearing the conscience of the soft-hearted colonizers?

Evrim Kaya