WOMEN Behind the Wheel is a feminist road trip documentary.

It follows us – Cat and Hannah – as we take on the Pamir Highway through Central Asia.

We use the journey to speak to as many women as possible along our route – encountering a Taekwondo world champion, women’s rights campaigners, bee keepers, zoo keepers, doctors and many more.

We met when we were 18 and, despite being chalk and cheese, have been inseparable ever since. After leaving university, we began planning a road trip across Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – countries we knew nothing about.

Our research brought to light the long-standing tension between Islamic national tradition and imposed Soviet values in these countries. Yet the impact of this tension on women in the region had hardly been documented.

So, we decided that our road trip would be one with a twist : two young women behind the wheel, using our car as a vehicle to access women’s stories from across this vast region.

Women opened up about everything from domestic abuse and “bride kidnapping” to masturbation and sexual empowerment.

Returning to the UK with 100 hours of footage, we knew we needed to make something that did justice to the stories that had been shared with us. With the support of a number of grants – from the Film & TV Charity, Edinburgh Film Festival and iWoman TV – we’ve created a film that we hope feels raw, authentic and intimate.

We’re often asked what we felt we learnt from the women we spoke to across the trip. It’s tricky to summarise because the stories in the film are so diverse.

And it was actually only in the editing of the film that we really started to make sense of the biggest takeaway we had.

When we set off on the journey we – over simplistically – wanted to hear headline-grabbing stories about women taking on the patriarchy.

Something we learned along the way, though, was that sometimes it’s the quieter, smaller stories that can be most powerful.

Lots of the women in the film are grassroots local activists, making incremental changes in their local community that – collectively – can instigate real progress for women’s rights.

Our conversation with 19- year-old Aiperi, who spoke matter of factly about how her sister had been “bride kidnapped” and about her fears of meeting the same fate, brought home the stark contrasts we faced as women from wholly different backgrounds.

But we have been touched by the sense of solidarity and empathy that the film has evoked for experiences of womanhood across national and cultural borders.

We hope that’s a feeling audiences continue to take away from the film as we begin our cinema tour of the UK.

If you would like to find out how to help support the work of the women that feature in the film, please get in touch at catandhan@yahoo.com