Rebels with a robot: ‘Rule Breakers’ celebrates Afghan girls who dared to dream
In 2017, several Afghan girls tried to travel to the U.S. to participate in a robotics competition. It became headline news. An exuberant new movie, “Rule Breakers,” tells the team’s backstory and also what happened next. Imagine “Bend It Like Beckham” but with STEM instead of soccer.
The story starts with gunfire. Three siblings – Roya, Elaha, and Ali Mahboob – are driving across an arid plain when a car pulls up alongside. A gunman leans out the window and starts shooting. His intended victims only survive because the rifle malfunctions. The reason for the attack? Roya (Nikohl Boosheri) has been teaching young girls how to use computers. She’s established 10 classrooms in the cities of Herat and Kabul. In a bid to garner funding from investors, Roya decides to form an Afghan girls robotics team that will compete internationally.
“Knowledge is power,” Roya tells the girls in one of her classes. “This is no longer our fathers’, our grandfathers’ Afghanistan. This is our Afghanistan, too.”
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onHow much courage does it take to claim your full humanity? What the new film “Rule Breakers” does really well, our reviewer says, is showcase Roya and her students as role models for making a difference in the world.
This low budget, well-made production is being distributed by Angel Studios. Until now, the studio has made its name producing Christian-themed fare. The independent company established its reputation with “The Chosen,” an ongoing TV series about Jesus’ life. Its theatrical releases include “Bonhoeffer,” a biopic about a famous German pastor who was a dissident in Nazi Germany, and “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” a true story about a church whose congregants adopted dozens of children. The studio is now broadening beyond theological stories to focus on meaningful, uplifting entertainment.
Filmed in Morocco and Hungary, the PG-rated “Rule Breakers” fits the bill. There are a few scenes depicting violence in war-torn Afghanistan, but nothing too graphic. The first 25 minutes of the movie are fairly serious and barely hint at the central story. There are exposition-laden flashbacks to Roya’s childhood, in which she’s banished from the classroom while the boys are taught how to use computers. Later, at university, Roya complains to an administrator, “We have five classes a day on Sharia law and zero on computers.” She successfully petitions the university to change its policy. Despite Roya’s reputation for rule breaking, her brother Ali (Noorin Gulamgaus) balks at her latest idea of launching a robotics squad.
“Don’t say it,” Roya tells Ali. “‘You might as well start the Afghan girls’ ice hockey team.’”
The fun begins when the two siblings visit the homes of promising students they’d like to recruit. It emulates the scenes in heist movies when ringleaders assemble a crew. Taara (Nina Hosseinzadeh), the daughter of a car mechanic, aspires to become a mechanical engineer. Ace coder Haadiya (Sara Malal Rowe) wants to launch her own company. Mathematics whiz Esin (Amber Afzali) wishes to study in Britain and earn a doctorate. Video gamer Arezo (Mariam Saraj), chosen to pilot the remote-controlled robots, dreams of owning a red Mustang. The first order of business for the newly formed team is googling “how to build a robot.” They only have two months to prepare before competing in Washington, D.C.
The world first heard about the Afghan Dreamers team when they were denied U.S. visas. President Donald Trump stepped in to help. He tasked the State Department, which had twice refused visas to the team, with finding an option that would allow the girls to compete. The movie makes no mention of Mr. Trump. It’s possible that co-writer and director Bill Guttentag, who won an Academy Award for co-directing the 9/11-themed short documentary “Twin Towers,” wanted to avoid getting entangled in polarized U.S. politics.
“Rule Breakers” is more interested in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan. The contestants’ families fret that they’ve given the girls too much freedom. When Esin is photographed touching a male competitor from the Netherlands while signing his shirt, it causes a scandal back home. Worse? Taliban insurgents engage in reprisals. The storyline is set just a few years prior to the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Rule Breakers” foreshadows the return of the Taliban and its silencing of women – banning education after age 12, and forbidding them from speaking in public (or to one another) or showing their faces. It’s a vast relief when the end titles inform viewers that these young women, at least, escaped to the U.S. and Europe.
Mostly, “Rule Breakers” is as joyful as its standout score by Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal. You’ll root for the immensely likable team as they become immersed in the world of competitive robotics. Call it the nerd Olympics. Teams of students from all over the world construct robots capable of performing tasks such as scooping up balls and throwing them into baskets.
In an unbilled cameo, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”) plays a competition host who tells the teams, “You are all from different nations. But you have come here today in the common hope that we can together build a better future through science and technology, which connects us all.”
That’s about as profound as “Rule Breakers” gets. It doesn’t offer revelatory cultural insight. Often, the script is too on-the-nose with overly earnest dialogue. But what the film does really well is showcase Roya and her students as role models for making a difference in the world. Breaking free of a society with rigid ideas about masculine and feminine roles, they fully embodied their humanity and enriched a society determined to partition women. It is a feel-good movie poignantly set against the heartbreaking current reality of Afghan women. The movie more than fulfills Angel Studios’ mission to “amplify light.”
“Rule Breakers” is rated PG for thematic material and some violent content.
