With the price of girls in Afghanistan going up, 18-year-old Sonita knows she is like a prize lamb for her family. Young flesh like hers can gain up to $9,000, and her mother is eager to sell her daughter to be devoured by the highest bidder.
Sonita has different aspirations though, the Afghani refugee is trying to make a career as a female rapper in Iran – a country where solo female singers have been outlawed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Just as Sonita is gaining interest from an underground studio willing to defy Sharia law to record her music, her mother arrives on a bus from Afghanistan in a bid to bring back her family’s most valued asset.
It is at this crossroads that director Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami’s handheld camera is turned on herself as she has to decide whether to help Sonita or follow her journey to its natural conclusion, (however unsavoury) for the sake of keeping the documentary “real”.
In her song ‘Brides for Sale’, Sonita sings: “Let me whisper, so no one hears that I speak of selling girls. My voice shouldn’t be heard since it’s against Sharia. Women must remain silent… this is our tradition.“
This documentary shatters this silence enforced on Afghani teen girls, and says loud and clear that they are not happy with the status quo of being sold as child brides. Looking at her family portrait, Sonita points to her parents and laughs: “When my Mom got engaged to my Dad, she was so young she called him Uncle”. Through Sonita’s bid not to follow in her mother’s footsteps we experience the strength and resilience of these voiceless women and we are left wanting to hear more.
Sonita is screening at the Sydney Film Festival.
