The Trouble with Girls 22:00, 2010 (Ref: ME10822)

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Description

There’s a long tradition in Afghanistan of families with no sons choosing to bring up one of their daughters as a boy. For the girls this means growing up dressed in boy’s clothes, answering to a boy’s name and being allowed the freedoms and privileges Afghan boys enjoy both within the family and outside. In this documentary we see that girls can live like this until they are young adults, at which moment they are suddenly expected to revert to being girls, put on a dress and a scarf and conform to all the restrictions and rules imposed on Afghan girls. For many young women it’s very hard to adjust to their new lives.

In this film we spend time with a girl currently growing up as a boy, talk to a young woman who’s still coming to terms with her experience of being raised as boy, seek the opinion of a mullah and hear from a human rights activist. The viewer is left with the distinct impression that there is no painless solution for families who feel incomplete without a son. There are also a number of surprises in the story.