Saara Chaudry

Parvana has a household to feed, and Saara Chaudry lets us hear the effort of sounding capable. Her voice performance in Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner (2017) is the clearest reason we have to recommend her. With Parvana’s father imprisoned, that firmness makes a terrible arrangement seem briefly workable, without suggesting the child can handle anything. We were frightened for her when finding food depended on being taken for a boy, because Chaudry keeps the strain audible even in an ordinary encounter.

The part was her voice-acting breakthrough, following small television roles and theatre work. Much of her work has remained in children’s and youth programmes, including Dino Dana (2017–2020) and Holly Hobbie (2018–2022), alongside further animation. Later live-action work includes Hannah in The Muppets Mayhem (2023). A child trying to keep a family fed gives an actor plenty to do, whatever age the intended audience.

Anita Doron’s screenplay helps by giving Parvana room to be resourceful without making her indestructible. Chaudry makes the firmness sound necessary: this is how the child gets on with the job, and we can still hear what it takes. The less successful passages are the awkward shifts into fantasy, which interrupt the daily struggle to feed the household. It is a telling weakness in a film we rate highly, because the practical business of getting by already holds our attention.

Resilient young characters recur in her work, and that is a useful quality for casting directors to recognise, provided it does not become the whole job. We would be interested to see her play someone selfish, or someone who is no help at all in a crisis. There is enough vulnerability in Parvana to make that an interesting prospect, rather than a demand that she abandon what works. Start with The Breadwinner, with some patience for its fantasy detours.