Go behind the lens of POV documentary What Tomorrow Brings.
POV: Describe What Tomorrow Brings for someone who hasn't seen it.
Beth Murphy: What Tomorrow Brings is a very intimate look at what it's like to grow up as a girl in Afghanistan today. It's a very patriarchal society, and in the school where I was filming since 2009 to 2015, it's the first opportunity ever for these girls to go to school. There was never a girls' school in this community. And it was incredible to see the transformation in the girls' lives, to have a community that goes from not supporting a girls' school at all, having a lot of reservations about the girls going to school, to watching the school grow exponentially and now to the point that there's so much support for girls' education that they're actually supporting a college for girls, for young women, in the same community. And that kind of change, if it happened over a generation, we would think it was remarkable almost anywhere in the world. But here it's happened in nine years in Afghanistan and I think my goal is really to show what's at stake in Afghanistan.
POV: What do you feel is at stake for the girls?
Murphy: For the girls, their very lives are what's at stake, and they're taking that risk every day to go to school. There was a real hope when we started filming that the security climate in Afghanistan would get better, that attacks on girls schools would, if not entirely stop, at least start to plummet. And in fact, what's happened since the school started is that the security situation has gotten so much worse. The threats to girls and the threats to women's rights have continued to increase. You name the way that they can attack girls' education and the extremists are doing it - water poisoning, gas attacks, mortars, gunfire, acid attacks on students and teachers. So the threats are extremely, extremely real. But there's another threat to girls' education that is even more significant than the security threats, which is forced engagement and early marriage. I mean, really, the number one threat to girls' education in Afghanistan is forced engagement and early marriage and we see this play out in significant and meaningful ways throughout the film. There are girls who are grappling with this, who have been forced to get engaged, don't want to get married, and are able to talk to their teachers. And I think what's been really interesting to see is that as the girls have received an education and they are starting to imagine a different future for themselves, their families are starting to envision also a different future for them. We might think, well, in order for these girls' lives to change, the men around them have to change, the people around them have to change first. And I think there's some truth in that. But I think there's more truth in the fact that because these girls are changing, they're changing the people around them in really significant ways. And so they're imagining themselves having different futures, having careers, being able to earn money, support themselves, support their families, who are very, very poor. There's a huge economic reason for marrying their daughters off - they're getting a dowry. And for many of the families, this is pure survival: Let's wait until the girl is 12 or 13 or an age we feel we can marry her off, we'll get some income from that, we'll sustain ourselves another few years. But now what I think they're realizing is, wait a minute, that might be a quick fix, but the long term fix and the greater support for the family and community comes from allowing the girls to finish their educations.
POV: Can you talk about the differences between younger and older generations of women and how they are evolving?
Murphy: One of the most interesting things I was able to witness while filming was this group of village elders who really run the show in the village, and if they did not support the school, there would not be a school, period. They kind of operate as this ad hoc PTO I would say. They come in at least once a month, a group of older men in the community and they sit down with the school leaders and they talk about how things are going. I think if we compare that to kind of how parent/teacher interactions happen in the United States we would expect, if not all women, certainly at least some women to be a part of that. That's really not the case, the men are the ones taking the leadership role in the school in terms of having an understanding of what's happening, how are things going, what can we do differently, what are you happy with, what do we need to change. They're the ones that are really the decision-makers there. And something else that was very interesting to see was when we were filming the first graduation all of the parents were invited into the school and they created a section for the women to sit, for the mothers to sit, and no mothers came. It's just not part of what's considered normal in the community, but now with their daughters coming to school, at home the conversation does include the women. They're still not a public face in the school. We don't get to see too much of it, but they are very quietly at home supporting the daughters' education. And one of the mothers in the film says to her daughter, you need to continue going to school. I don't want you to end up like me, blind to everything happening in the world. And that's a very powerful moment for her to recognize that although she is illiterate, she's using her thumb to sign her name, she doesn't want that future for her daughter. I think the mothers are playing a very significant role in the support at home, and what we see is that now that the daughters are having a different experience growing up. The expectation is that the next generation's experience will be even more different, and it's exciting to see that transition already happening.
POV: Can you talk about what inspired the title, What Tomorrow Brings?
Murphy: I don't think I've ever made a documentary film where the first title that I came up with actually stuck. But with What Tomorrow Brings, that was the very first title back in 2009, and it has never changed throughout the course of the filmmaking process. And that's because of the meaning and the weight that this phrase carries for the people in the film, and for me seeing what's happening at the school and in the country. There's always this very real like sense of fear about what tomorrow brings. What does tomorrow bring? Like, oh my gosh, you know it's incredible that these girls are in school today. But it could all be taken away so quickly. And when you're in Afghanistan, if I could just try to capture what it feels like to be there. You have such a sense of the fragility of everything. The fragility of society, of your own life, of the lives of others. And the fragility for the girls. The fragility of their education. You have that sense of impending doom. So there is a very real sense of not knowing what tomorrow brings. I lived for many years with this title, What Tomorrow Brings, and having a very kind of you know negative relationship with it. I felt that it carried negative connotations. And now that some of the girls have graduated and there's another graduating class on the way, more than double the size of the first graduating class. The school has grown from a 109 students to almost 600 students. There's not only a K to 12, but there is a college. I said, well wait a minute, we do in a sense know more about what tomorrow brings for the girls. And yes, there is still the fragility, but there is also a sense of knowledge about what the future holds. And some of it's very, very positive.
POV: What do you hope an audience member watching What Tomorrow Brings will walk away with?
Murphy: What I hope that viewers take away from watching What Tomorrow Brings is something that really springs from an Elie Wiesel quote that I love. What he said is, "I still believe in man in spite of man". What that quote represents is hope, and I think the greatest trait that we as humans have is the ability to have hope and believe in possibility. And when I look at what Razia is doing and what's happening at the school and how the lives of the girls are being transformed, I have hope. I have hope for them, I have hope for Afghanistan, and I feel hope for our world. And I have the sense that it is right, it is right to have hope, it is right to believe in possibility. And I hope that's what people feel also when they watch the film.