HERAT: In the western Afghan city of Herat, where there are no cinemas and women only venture outside wearing head-to-toe veils, Rahima, Rita, Mariam and Monirah are women of ill repute.

But in following their dreams to become actresses in a country where just five years ago film and theatre were banned under the Taliban government, the women are mavericks trying to bring culture to their war-ravaged homeland.

“To be an actress in Afghanistan doesn’t bring you anything but a bad reputation,” says Rita Hosseini.

“But someone has to do it. What is a country without culture, without stories to make us dream, without cinema?” asks the widow who tints her hair and lines her almond eyes with dark khol.

Hosseini, who is raising two young children alone, makes her living as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Acting, she says, is just for fun.

“Cinema is for art and for pleasure,” she says.

It is a pleasure that few women enjoy, even at the theatres operating in the capital, Kabul.

And for these actresses, it is a pleasure that sometimes carries a high price.

In the cramped office of the local production house of the government’s Afghan Film, Mariam Hachemi says she once attempted suicide to avoid being forced to give up acting and marry a man she considered “too poor”.

The director of Afghan Film in Herat, Fridoon Faghery, said: “The problem is our government which does not give any importance to culture.

“Movies, culture, these are the best way to advance mindsets and to change the way men look at women. But we do not have the money and have to work with outdated equipment.” The office has in the past two years produced about 20 films for television, Faghery says.

In Herat, a city of 250,000 people on the border with Iran, it is Iranian cinema that inspires Monirah Hachemi.

“It is seen as very bad to be an actress in Afghanistan. It is considered bad for a woman but I believe what I do is pure. And I am lucky because my parents support me,” Monirah says.

—AFP