In Afghanistan today, there is no social issue more controversial than women’s rights. And nothing cuts to the heart of the matter more than the education of young girls because nothing so radically threatens to change a deeply patriarchal society than rising generations of educated women.

In 2009, when Razia Jan, a visionary and fearless educator, arrived in the war-blasted village of Deh’Subz to open the Zabuli Education Center, she placed herself at the center of her country’s turmoil. As recounted in the new documentary What Tomorrow Brings, she faced families and village elders hostile to female education, threats (and nearby examples) of Taliban violence against schools for girls and the haunting question of what would happen when U.S. forces withdrew. To sustain herself, Razia had her own resourcefulness, the passion of her teachers and, perhaps most surprisingly in a conservative rural setting, the free-spirited determination of the girls themselves to get an education.

What Tomorrow Brings is a bracing, touching film about girls coming of age and struggling to find their way amid the chaotic, violent present and uncertain future that is Afghanistan.

Watch What Tomorrow Brings on the PBS documentary series POV (Point of View) this Monday, October 31, 2016 at 10/9c.

Learn more about the Zabuli Girls’ School and Razia Jan’s efforts here.