This animation from Czech director Michaela Pavlátová has an interesting premise; a blonde and blue-eyed Czech woman marries an Aghan and goes to live with his family in Kabul as the Taliban increase their dominance.

At first Herra (Zuzana Stivínová) is happy (or at least willing) to oblige her husband and his family, wearing a burkha outside, hiding when visitors come to the house and being content with domestic life. Her husband Nazir (Hynek Cermak) is kind, his father is something of a feminist and the only antagonist is her sister-in-law’s husband Kaiz (Mohammed Aref Safai) who is a bully. Complications arise when she doesn’t get pregnant and she begins to witness the women around her suffering harm, particularly Kaiz’s wife Frišta (Shamla Maqsoodi), after whom the source novel by Petra Procházková is named, and his daughter Roshangol (Maryam Malikzada), destined to be married at puberty.

The Maad (Shahid Maqsoodi) of the title is a young boy with a genetic condition that makes him a target and whom Herra and Nazir foster. The synopsis makes him seem something of a catalyst for change but he is much more peripheral in the story than I expected. The animation style is pleasant and effectively uses realism and fantasy to convey meaning. We are shown different points of view of the oppression of women with Herra sometimes advocating for her limitations to well-meaning foreigners.

The feeling overall is that it is complex (of course) and that not all Afghan men are bad (#notallmen) but it feels relatively flat and lacks emotional impact. The ending is perhaps a realistic one but it felt like it was trying too hard to sit on the fence.

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