Since the Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has once again become a country where every aspect of women's lives is controlled: education, work, movement, even their bodies. Khamush was born from a real encounter—between a Western filmmaker, among the last to enter the country after the Taliban takeover, and a group of young Afghan women attending a 'clandestine' school, officially non-existent but supported and protected by local communities. From this meeting emerges a story with two voices and two geographies: the girls who remained in Afghanistan and continue studying in secret, and a group of young Afghan women who reached Italy through the humanitarian corridors organized by Sapienza University of Rome.
The documentary interweaves these two realities. In Afghanistan, N., energetic and determined enough to earn the nickname 'President', refused to wear the burqa on the day the Taliban arrived. S., the coordinator of the center, recounts the forced closure of the school and its clandestine reopening just a few weeks later—a gesture of resistance that, during filming, would also lead to the arrest of some of the coordinators by the Taliban. The director continued documenting their stories for a year after the trip through an online journalism course, for as long as it remained possible.
In Italy, Frishta dreams of becoming a journalist and studies Global Humanity at Sapienza; she carries the trauma of the Kabul airport attack and has spent two years trying to bring her sister out of Afghanistan through Iran. Goli, a painter, was forced to burn and bury her paintings before fleeing with her husband, and is now trying to rebuild her life and artistic practice in Rome. Alongside them are Mara Matta, a Sapienza professor, and Morteza, an Afghan artist who has lived in exile in Italy for ten years. They made the humanitarian corridor possible and continue to support the young women through cultural and artistic projects—including the stage production The School of Herat, which becomes a cathartic act of processing trauma for the protagonists.