It’s hard not to flash on “Boys Keep Swinging” when one boy-disguised character in Nora Twomey’s animated feature says to the other, “When you’re a boy…” As David Bowie’s song would have it, “nothing stands in your way.” When you’re a girl in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2001, however, everything is an obstacle. Eleven-year-old Parvana (Saara Chaudry), the heroine of Twomey’s feature, is a headstrong girl who helps her father, Nurullah, sell used goods at the market. A former teacher who lost his leg in the war, Nurullah shares his knowledge of history with her. When the Taliban gets wind of this subversion, they haul him off to jail and beat Parvana’s mother when she tries to bring him his walking stick, so Parvana makes like Mulan and cuts her hair to pass as a boy. Since Nurullah used to tell her stories, she does the same to comfort her little brother. In the process of providing for her family, she befriends another girl disguised as a boy who helps her come up with a plan to free Nurullah. by Kathy Fennessy