Through the story of the Afghan Girls National Football Team and their harrowing escape from the Taliban, the work was created to humanize the experience of vulnerable female communities while also demonstrating how protecting their human right to privacy and giving them a safe space to share can lead to extraordinary things.

When the Taliban took power in August 2021, they banned girls from going to school and limited women’s ability to participate in many parts of public life. Women are no longer allowed to participate in sports, go to work, or participate in activities like shopping alone or visiting beauty salons. For high profile female athletes like those on the Afghan Girls National Football Team, it became a matter of life or death. Through the safety of their WhatsApp group chat, they orchestrated their escape to Portugal.

For many women in dangerous situations, WhatsApp is a lifeline. Thanks to a wealth of privacy and security features, it gives them the confidence to communicate with others in their community, find safe space to share their story and, in many cases, find their way to safety. Through its public policy work, WhatsApp has long worked to enshrine the rights of women, particularly around digital privacy. We Are Ayenda is a reminder of why those rights are more important than ever. When it came to production, an all female crew, including Director, DP and line producer, further demonstrated the brands steadfast commitment to gender equality.

For many women in dangerous situations, WhatsApp is a lifeline. Thanks to a wealth of privacy and security features, it gives them the confidence to communicate with others in their community, find safe space to share their story and, in many cases, find their way to safety. Our job was to authentically demonstrate how the features that make it secure help to create a safe space for connection through a story that would resonate with the global diaspora of young women.

From TV to film, the entertainment world has long favored telling the survival stories of men. The harrowing story of the Afghan Girls National Football Team was a chance to flip the script, portraying vulnerable young women as heroes capable of extraordinary feats, not victims. The other ambition of the documentary was to refocus the media’s attention on the continued suffering of women and girls in Afghanistan, providing a visceral reminder to once again raise awareness of the issue.

We Are Ayenda is a half-hour documentary that tells the story of the Afghan Girls National Football Team and their heroic escape from Afghanistan after the Taliban took power in 2021. Interweaving emotional interviews with harrowing archival footage and the real text messages shared by the teen players as they used their WhatsApp group chat to secretly orchestrate their escape, the film reveals the bravery of these young women and their determination to continue playing the sport they love.

The life or death story follows the profound relationship that develops between Farkhunda Muhtaj, the former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s national football team and humanitarian activist, and the teenage members of the youth team. Despite never having met in person, Muhtaj leads the young women to safety via WhatsApp texts and voice messages, which are woven throughout the documentary to retell their story.

When it comes to privacy, no messaging app is more secure than WhatsApp. Our job was to authentically demonstrate how the features that make it secure help to create a safe space for connection through a story that would resonate with the global diaspora of young women. Rather than simply talk about what makes WhatsApp so private, we set out to create an emotional connection to the brand by capturing the powerful transformation its privacy features enable in the lives of vulnerable WhatsApp users.The film not only shows the brand’s privacy features in action, it positions WhatsApp as a lifeline and a safe space for those who need it most.

To maximize our reach, the half-hour documentary launched on Amazon Prime Video during the first week of the 2023 Women’s World Cup, placing the film in the center of the cultural conversation at just the right moment, raising awareness of the experience of vulnerable female communities and tapping into the power of sisterhood. The documentary will live on Amazon Prime Video, along with supporting assets to amplify the story across WhatsApp channels and other paid media support.

The work over-delivered on the campaign objective, which was to drive conversation around WhatsApp privacy through earned media during a tentpole global moment, with 550M impressions and $1M media value in the US and UK alone from premium outlets like BBC and Wired. Meanwhile, viewership on Prime Video smashed expectations, overdelivering by nearly 40%. More importantly, the film was organically shared by influential voices like Malala Yousafzai, who’s Malala Fund profiled the film and shared it with her millions of followers.

We Are Ayenda is the first film of our “True Stories on WhatsApp” global platform, which spotlights the amazing stories of how the diasporic community uses the messaging app to do the extraordinary. Through each story, we aim to raise awareness around issues facing vulnerable populations, while inspiring audiences to come together on WhatsApp to safely and securely create change in their own world.

To reflect the power of sisterhood both in front of and behind the camera, our filmmaking team, including the director, cinematographer, line producer and editor, were all women of the diaspora. Each of whom came together to help create a safe space for the girls to share the most intimate details of their death defying story.