A coming-of-age film, by filmmakers of Muslim heritage, brings a humanising perspective to the complicated subject of young people drawn into ISIS
Who were the ‘ISIS brides,’ before they became headlines? Director Nadia Fall and writer Suhayla El-Bushra’s new fiction film is inspired by real-life cases of teenagers recruited by the extremist organisation but it approaches the subject without yielding to sinister tones or sensationalism.
Brides, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2025, is more interested in the emotional reality of the young people who made the trip to Syria.
Part-road film, part-bildungsroman, Brides follows two UK high schoolers Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Saffiya Ingar), best friends trying to escape their troubled lives. We are transported almost immediately to the first leg of their ill-advised journey: a flight to Turkey, where the film stays for much of its duration. Everything leading up to that moment—the pressures and attractions that make the two young girls decide to run away—is introduced in vignettes thereafter.
Isolated and impressionable
The girls’ alienation is as sociopolitical as it is personal. Doe, who lost her Muslim father at a young age, feels more and more alone as her mother gets involved with a dodgy crowd. There is also subtle and overt bullying at school over Doe’s modest dressing. Classmate Muna, for all intents and purposes, is a “bad Muslim“—fast-talking, sweary, defiant. She is not exempt from racist discrimination either: A teacher rebukes her with ‘Prevent duty,’ a controversial UK strategy for identifying people at risk of radicalisation.
Religion, by contrast, appears to offer them safety. Doe grows close to a young man at the community centre about to leave for Syria, and out of an impulse to follow him there, discovers a recruiter Hanan. As a noticeable drawback, very little of Muna’s backstory emerges until the end of the film. Given she is often the more resolute of the two to leave, the plot feels lopsided without a fuller picture of her life. If her motivations were meant to be a final revelation tying things together, the desired effect does not take hold.
The plot twists are familiar too (a lost passport, a missed bus), yet we want to know how the characters will navigate them anyway. However, unlike the typical travel fiilm, the viewer roots for the girls to not reach their destination.
Brides’ biggest asset is the bright friendship at its centre. The tropes used to establish the duo’s bond are well-worn—catching the breeze out of a car window, sharing tranquil smiles on a swing—but not any less charming, thanks to sparkling performances by both Hassan and Ingar. The plot twists are familiar too (a lost passport, a missed bus), yet we want to know how the characters will navigate them anyway. However, unlike the typical travel fiilm, the viewer roots for the girls to not reach their destination.
Brides, more than a cautionary tale
Though the film creates no singular or obvious villain, the seriousness of the dangers the two are escaping from and towards is palpable. The ‘recruiter,’ Hanan, addressing Doe and Muna through recorded messages, remains an invisible voice promising them the sense of community they lack. And as easy as it may be to believe that the country they left behind is safer, it is clear it has failed to protect them. “It won’t be like back home. They want us there,” Doe tells Muna, for instance.
The filmmakers, being of Muslim heritage, bring sensitivity to depicting radicalisation. The problem of minoritisation and the attendant longing for belonging is a lot to unpack in 93 minutes, but Brides establishes this through circumstance and avoids offering lessons. Previous portrayals of such runaway brides have tended to reduce them to a cautionary tale, but Brides imagines the disappointments, youthful innocence, and mischief that go with that unfortunate decision.
