The Secret Reading Club of Kabul
Shakiba Adil & Elina Hirvonen / Finland & Norway / 2026 / World Premiere / 95 min
In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, and speak freely, a group of young women risk their lives to form a secret reading circle.
Inspired by Anne Frank’s experiences in 1940s Amsterdam, a group of young women in Kabul begin to write their own diaries. They secretly establish a reading circle. They have to, because the Taliban forbids women from reading and educating themselves. We experience with shocking clarity what is at stake when the Taliban storms a hidden school or arrests young girls for practicing martial arts.
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.