Sisters: From Kabul to California – film, family and resilience in the face of displacement

By Isabel Rose Soloaga | Issue 27

Zahra and Masoma Mohammady with their little brother, Ali Taha

At just nine and seven years old, Zahra and Masoma Mohammady stood before U.S. Marines at Kabul’s airport, clutching their little brother’s U.S. passport. Amid gunfire and the crush at the gates on 15 August 2021, their words became the lifeline that saved their family. Their insistence opened a pathway onto an evacuation flight and out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan — back to their home in Sacramento, California. You can watch their extraordinary story unfold in Sisters: From Kabul to California, a film co-created with the girls and their family.

Their moment of agency stands starkly against the Taliban’s continuing campaign to erase girls’ futures: since their return to power, Taliban authorities have barred girls from secondary and higher education, leaving more than two million girls without the opportunity to study beyond primary school. The Mohammady family also belong to the Shia Hazara minority, historically targeted for violence. And, as daughters of a U.S. military translator, they were direct targets for Taliban retaliation. One second of hesitation could have been fatal.

Sisters: From Kabul to California follows Zahra and Masoma as they translate their family’s journey from Kabul to California. The film was conceived and produced as a collaboration with the family and co-directed with their uncle, Najaf Ali Mohammady. It builds from the girls’ own contributions: they helped shape scenes, used cameras themselves, and narrated portions of their experience. This is not a film about refugees; it is a film made with two brilliant young women and their family, centering their voices, creativity, and leadership from a young age.

I first met the family while working with the International Rescue Committee at Fort Bliss during the 2021 evacuations. Lunchtime conversations with the girls’ uncle, then 21, quickly evolved into a co-creative project. This reflexive approach seeks to disrupt the common dynamics of migration storytelling by shifting power, providing tools to those whose lives we seek to represent, and foregrounding youth agency as a form of resistance and contribution to social change.

The political context for their story is urgent. Afghanistan’s economy has been severely reconfigured since August 2021: the sudden cutoff of official foreign reserves, banking restrictions, and the collapse of much international aid have driven poverty, food insecurity, and economic precarity for millions. These structural shocks compound the human cost of Taliban policies targeting women and girls. Scholars warn that the prohibition on girls’ schooling, and the broader rollback of women’s rights, represents not only moral crimes but long-term threats to health, social cohesion, and development.

Legal and policy developments in the United States continue to have a significant impact on the lives of Afghan evacuees and diaspora families. In January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced the indefinite suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, followed by the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghanistan in July. This status had provided eligible individuals with work authorisation and protection from deportation. While ongoing litigation has resulted in temporary administrative stays, the policy changes have introduced uncertainty for many Afghan families, raising concerns about legal stability, family reunification, and continued participation in community life.

These policy shifts intersect with the Mohammady family’s lived experience: in the scramble to reach Kabul airport, they made the agonising decision to leave elderly parents behind. After months of advocacy, they were evacuated to a U.S. base in Qatar, only to wait years for reunification decisions and legal certainty. The girls still hope to reunite with their grandparents. Their story captures a larger pattern: arrival in a safe country does not end vulnerability when legal pathways and protections are fragile.

Yet the film insists on hope, resilience, and possibility. In Sacramento, Zahra and Masoma attend school, draw futures for themselves, and practice the everyday rituals of childhood. Zahra dreams of becoming an airline pilot, experiencing her first flight as a student pilot in the film. Masoma hopes to become a doctor, giving back to the community she has built in Sacramento.

Their laughter, creativity, and forward-looking plans are acts of survival and civic contribution, demonstrating how girls and youth can be active agents in shaping communities, contributing to humanitarian and development goals, and advancing social inclusion. By centering their voices, Sisters reframes the refugee child as a complex actor capable of bearing trauma, exercising leadership, and driving transformative impact.

Ultimately, Sisters: From Kabul to California asks us to recognise how global politics — from schooling bans in Kabul to U.S. immigration policy — are woven through individual lives. When two girls convinced U.S. Marines at the gates of Kabul airport that they belonged in California, they exercised decisive agency. In telling their story themselves, Zahra and Masoma invite viewers to consider not only the cost of displacement, but also the critical role of women and youth in peacebuilding, humanitarian efforts, and development initiatives. Their example underscores the responsibilities of host societies to protect education, preserve family unity, and maintain pathways to safety that empower young people to contribute meaningfully to their communities and the broader world.

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You can watch the full movie here and find out more about Zahra and Masoma’s story.

Isabel Rose Soloaga 

Isabel is a documentary filmmaker and Research Fellow in Law at the University of Sussex. Her work explores the intersections of human rights, climate migration, and gender, bridging scholarship with powerful storytelling to amplify the voices of people on the move. A UC Berkeley alumna with an MA in Migration and Global Development from the University of Sussex, she has published peer-reviewed research in Frontiers in Human Dynamics, is co-author of Decolonising Queer Migration: Perspectives of Iranians in Exile (Bristol University Press), and her award-winning films have screened internationally. She has presented her research and films at the University of Oxford, the American University of Kabul, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and other institutions. Her debut poetry collection, Home is Where (Finishing Line Press), is forthcoming. 

Website: www.isabelsoloaga.com 

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