Set in Herat Province in Afghanistan, Rule Breakers follows the radical (especially for the Taliban and their followers) attempt by Afghan businesswoman Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri) to teach computer skills to Afghan girls. This is no easy feat – from the time she was a girl herself, Mahboob was fascinated by computers, stepping up on a bench and peering through the classroom windows to see what was only being taught to the boys, the girls in the class banished outside. Eventually, as a young woman, she persuades the owner of a local café to let her come use his computer – unused, left to gather dust because the café owner doesn’t know how to use it – an hour before opening. Roya talks a good game, because it’s clear that she doesn’t know how to set it up, either, but with determination and help from her sister Elaha (the real-life Elaha is one of the script writers of the film), they get the computer running and start a journey that leads to the core story that Rule Breakers wants to tell. In the face of discrimination and violence that women in Afghanistan face, in the face of forces that don’t believe girls and women have any place in a classroom, Roya Mahboob sets out first to teach girls computer skills, and then to create and mentor the first all-girl robotics team in Afghanistan. And her goal is not only to teach the team, but to send it to robotics competitions held all around the world.
It’s an incredibly ambitious goal. She finds many girls who are both willing and eager to join such an endeavor, but it’s another thing to try to convince their families – usually their fathers, or uncles, for this is a highly patriarchal society, after all. Roya also lacks the funding necessary to back her team, and part of the film traces her attempts to connect with people like the American tech executive Samir Sinha (played by Indian actor Ali Fazal) to help the team out.
Director Bill Guttentag sets his film up like a by-the-playbook sports movie. Feisty underdogs work hard, face setbacks. Work harder, face more setbacks, until they achieve glory at the end. The film does end up feeling rote at times, but what makes the difference here is the immense likeability of the young women who form the Afghan Dreamers team: Taara (Nina Hosseinzadah) with her mad mechanical skills; Esin (Amber Afzali) whose life is controlled by her uncle, Sabine (Anita Major) and Haadiya (Sara Malal Row) – the film manages to forge an emotional connection with the audience through them. These are smart young women with big dreams that are often smothered by the society they live in. Being part of the robotics team and having the chance to compete, to show off what they’ve learned, what they can do, and how what they create eventually becomes meaningful to the society they live in – these, along with the actual competitions, where we get to watch these young women in action and see their absolute delight at being allowed to stretch their skills and build their knowledge, and well, just have some fun, this is the part of the film that engages and makes you wish you could just see more of them doing that.
Rule Breakers does have problems with pacing and structure – the flashbacks feel forced, and sometimes confuse the narrative. Despite setting up hurdles for the team to overcome (like visa problems, an American travel ban, the rigid and oppressive nature of the place they live in), it sometimes all feels a little too pat. But the race towards the film’s final competition, which sees the underdog Dreamers finally triumph, gives us a picture of joyous female empowerment that allows us to overlook the film’s flaws. Most importantly, at least for me, was that the film serves as a reminder that no matter how successful this team was, how successful Roya Mahboob has become, women in Afghanistan remain shut out.