‘In Her Hands’ Review

It’s been a year since the United States withdrew its remaining troops from Afghanistan, leaving the Taliban to seize the country’s major cities, including its capital, Kabul. The takeover was a stunning, if unsurprising, turn of events. For 20 years, Western powers deployed soldiers, sank billions of dollars and made untenable promises to citizens of this terrorized South Asian country. Few people — including the officials orchestrating the conflict — can articulate the purpose of this invisible war, but no one can deny its devastating toll.

Zarifa Ghafari, the subject of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s ambitious and slippery documentary In Her Hands, desperately wants the broader world to understand the consequences of war, especially on Afghan women. At the start of the film, which takes place 19 months before the Taliban’s takeover, she was the youngest woman mayor in the country. (Some early press coverage misidentified her as the country’s first woman mayor, but that title belongs to Azra Jafafri, who was appointed in 2008.) Ghafari stepped into her role in 2018 and faced a strenuous battle trying to gain respect from her constituents in Maidan Shar, the Wardick Province’s capital; other government officials; and her own father.