Afghan filmmaker Roya Sadat becomes the voice of unknown women

For a generation, Roya Sadat has been a voice for Afghan women in one of the world's worst places to be one.

One of the first female filmmakers to make her name in 2001, she has won plaudits at home and abroad for works such as "A Letter to the President", and "Three Dots", and "Playing the Taar".

She has lived through the Soviet occupation -- fleeing with her family for their lives at times -- endured the brutality of civil war, and then the violent oppression, where women existed only in the shadows and basic freedoms were lost.

Afghan film producer and director Roya Sadat checks a film in an editing room at the Roya Film House in Kabul. 

Her great fear is a return to that kind of fundamentalism: The February 29 deal may be a potential first step for peace in a nation that for decades has only known war, but it offers no guarantees the few women's rights set out in the current constitution will be upheld.

Almost 39 percent of girls go to secondary school according to World Bank figures for 2017, while USAid says that of the 300,000 students in universities, around one third are female citing figures from the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education.

'Era of suffocation'

 She is not alone in fearing that the small inroads made in women's rights may disappear -- in urban centres young people have grown up listening to music, watching television, and more recently accessing the internet and social media.

Sadat works on a laptop at the Roya Film House in Kabul. 

Sadat, who has been writing stories, poems and plays since she was a little girl, recalls how her life ground to a halt in 1996.

Schools closed, women were confined to their homes, the televisions and radios stopped playing.

'Refuse to be silenced'

 In her twenties she set up an independent film company -- Roya Film House with her sister Alka, and was awarded a scholarship to study film in South Korea.

Afghan film producer and director Roya Sadat speaks during an editorial meeting.

She has also written television dramas for prominent media firm Moby Group.

Her stories are the stories of Afghan women.

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From the outset of her career she has faced questions from her family and criticisms from the community, but she argues that when locals come to see her work -- they understand.

Her 2017 film "A Letter to the President" shows a woman slapping back at her violent husband when he hits her, before accidentally killing him.