Hot Docs 2025: Writing Hawa Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

In the first seconds of Writing Hawa, audiences watch a plane land in Paris, France. Its director, Najiba Noori, tells the story of how she left Kabul, Afghanistan. Having left her home behind, she hints at an unfinished film of hers. This is that film, a diary documentary about her mother, Hawa. From there, Noori travels back in time, introducing audiences to her film’s the titular subject. She is a middle-aged woman with six children, four boys and two girls. 

Besides the strict culture of Afghanistan, especially towards women, Hawa raises her daughters to have independence, encouraging them to spread their wings. In the case of Noori, she majored in journalism. Leaning on her education and experience, the director highlights the strength of her mother. Not only does she take care of her husband with dementia, she also helps to raise her grandchildren, while learning how to read and write. However, her family was soon faced by the incoming return of the Taliban who threatened to set back all the progress she had achieved. 

Writing Hawa begins as a personal letter from daughter to mother. Yet, as the film develops, Noori analyzes the social structures of Afghanistan and records her ascent through the resurgence of the Taliban. Opposite to other documentaries about women’s rights in the country, such as 2023’s Bread and Roses and 2022’s In Her Hands, Noori moves from the micro to the macro.  The film revolves around its central figure, being her mother, a strong woman who holds the family together. It is easy to engage with her because she is representative of the prominent female figures in the lives of all audiences, beit mothers, aunts, or grandmothers. In order to give her children a better life, she had to sacrifice that much more. In an emotional scene, Hawa describes a love she left behind to raise her children. Her whole life revolves around the family.

The antagonistic presence of the Taliban provides a dramatic counterbalance to the narrative. Their rise also meant the destruction of Hawa’s hopes and dreams. Even so, Noori presents Zahra, Hawa’s granddaughter who did not get to see her family for twelve years following a contentious divorce. Still, she returns to the family at the worst possible time. The Taliban took fifteen counties, and Kabul’s rise was soon after. At that moment, Hawa forgets about herself again, suffering from the separation from her family once again. The matriarch is aware of what the future holds for her children: forced marriage. Her pain can be felt by audiences as they know the toll that arranged marriage took on her life. Therefore, history looks to repeat itself. 

The last half of the film lacks context and structural organization; it gets off track when the family separates. Still, Noori writes a letter to her recently alphabetized mother. It is not only a literal scene of a letter. But she wrote it in across an 85-minute film that tackles how misogyny destroys women’s lives. It reflects the past, but is a glimpse of what the future may hold for Afghan women. 

Above all else, Writing Hawa delivers a beautiful love letter to a mother who gave up everything to raise her children and give them a better life. 

Score: 80/100

*still courtesy of Hot Docs*

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.