Inspired Beyond Belief

In July 2000, I was teaching a journalism class at American University Paris and brought my students to Amnesty International for a difficult conversation about genocide. As we were wrapping up, the Amnesty representative ushered us into a room and over to a large cardboard box with a bright blue fabric peeking out. "Have you ever worn a burqa before?" she asked. As I pulled the tent-like garment over my head and imagined being forced to wear it, I thought about what it would be like to be invisible to the world. That's when I knew I wanted to produce a film about Afghanistan and help Afghan women to become visible again. The challenge was finding a way for the film to resonate with an American audience.

A year later, after the attacks of September 11, the ability to draw the connection between Afghanistan and us was obvious. Another three months later, I traveled to Afghanistan to film the growing humanitarian crisis and the aid workers who were struggling to respond to it. I was looking forward to seeing women shedding their burqas, liberated from the medieval laws of the Taliban. But when I arrived, all the women I encountered were still covered head-to-toe, allowed only a small mesh patch for their window to the world. When the documentary I was working on failed to sell, I vowed to return to this place that captured a piece of me with its beauty, isolation and sorrow.

What I could never have imagined then is that, as I was filming in Afghanistan, there were two women living in my own backyard who were opening their eyes to the world in new and profound ways after losing their husbands on September 11. Four years later, I would return to Afghanistan to film Beyond Belief with Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose loss gave them permission to shut out the world but whose compassion forced them to have a leadership role in it.  

Both women were pregnant on September 11 - Susan with her third child, Patti with her second. They were strangers to each other then, living comfortable lives in Boston's suburbs. "It was the American dream," Susan would describe to me many times. But as David Retik sat down across the aisle from Mohammad Atta on American Airlines Flight 11 and Patrick Quigley stepped on board United Airlines Flight 175 (the two jets hijackers crashed into the World Trade Center Towers), Susan and Patti began a journey of reaching out - first to each other, then to women half a world away.

As the world has become increasingly divided by politics, ethnicity and religion, Susan and Patti affirm a common humanity that we all share. From the beginning, they have recognized their Afghan counterparts as individuals - women they identify with and feel a connection to - rather than a monolithic, nameless, faceless group, as often happens during the world's tragedies.

I was struck by Susan and Patti's ability to recognize Afghanistan for all its complexities. True, it is the country in which the terrorists trained to kill their husbands (although not one of the terrorists was actually Afghani), but it is also a place that had been used as a pawn during the Cold War, only to then be abandoned by the international community - which sparked a civil war that would last another decade. The effects were especially cruel for women. Banished from public life by the Taliban, they've suffered staggering declines in health. (Afghanistan is still one of the only countries in the world where women have a shorter life expectancy than men.)  And when we arrived in Kabul in May 2006, the burqa still defined public life for most women. A year later, things are becoming even worse for women as the Taliban resurgence gains strength and the security situation deteriorates.

The problems impact hardest on Afghanistan's 500,000 war widows, who have an average of five children each. Many of these women are forced to beg, some to prostitute themselves, in order to feed their families. There is no life insurance in Afghanistan, and when a husband dies, all of his property is given to his father or brothers - not to his wife. Sadly, in-laws are often unable - or unwilling - to care for widows, 90 percent of whom are illiterate and do not possess the skills necessary to support themselves and their children.

Susan and Patti's mission is simple: to make life better for these women. Simple also is their message: Hatred is the root of terrorism. They aren't naïve enough - nor do they have enough hubris - to think they can stop terrorism in its tracks. But they do have enough optimism - and enough faith in humanity - to believe that the War on Terror cannot be fought with bombs and bullets alone.

Much like Susan and Patti's goal of collectively improving our world, the Tribeca Film Festival was founded on the principle that entertainment can effect social change.  Whether Beyond Belief will be received as an actionable film is for viewers to decide, but that is my goal: to give people an opportunity to reflect on grief, hope and courage in ways that inspire them to make their own difference in the world. -MPM

At the 2008 Sonoma Valley Film Festival, Beyond Belief was awarded Best Documentary Feature.