‘Brides’: Sundance Review

Dir. Nadia Fall. UK/Italy, 2025.  93mins

England, 2014, and a Somali teenager leaves her council home within the early hours of the morning with a stuffed backpack to the phrases: ‘Bismillah, within the title of Allah, the good and compassionate’. This movie known as Brides and we instantly know the place we’re: on the earth of Shamima Begum and the three 15 year-old ‘Isis Brides’ of East London who ran away to Syria. This isn’t Begum’s life story – that’s out there by way of the grim doc The Shamima Begum Story. Nadia Fall’s glorious, compact drama/highway movie dances together with her shadow and that of her lifeless buddies, and emerges all of the extra highly effective due to its proximity to it.

A part of what makes Brides so partaking is its closeness to the reality

Nadia Fall is the creative director of London’s Younger Vic, the previous creative director of Stratford East and the director of not less than 10 performs on the UK’s venerable Nationwide Theatre: her movie debut is not going to go un-noticed for that reality, although it’s extra probably that any future cinema profession may observe that of the NT’s outgoing AD Rufus Norris (Damaged, London Street), so packed is her schedule. This story could also be properly documented in European cinema, for instance, however Brides is a novel movie for the UK and different Anglo markets, and its two good younger stars are destined for constructive notices wherever the movie travels following its world premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competitors.

A part of what makes Brides so partaking — and never in a passive method – is its closeness to the reality: not simply of the Begum story, however life truths. The childishness of 15 year-olds, their slyness, rage, sudden tempests, hostility, vulnerability and inexperience: a unstable high-stakes combine earlier than it’s seasoned with racism and the exclusion and loneliness of rising up brown in a poor seaside city. Doe (terrific newcomer and open-call-cast Ebada Hassan) is a religious Muslim woman – not like her mom (Yusra Warsama) – who arrived within the UK on the age of three. Loud-mouthed spitfire Muna (Safiyya Ingar) is a trouble-maker of Pakistani descent and the pure chief of those greatest buddies and unlikely allies.

The screenplay, written by Suhayla El-Bushra, persistently frustrates expectations and nearly invitations resistance. Doe and Muna land in Istanbul airport with out the viewer realizing something about their backgrounds, and even their names. The movie seemingly guarantees a journey to the horrors of Syria for 2 harmless youngsters, however instantly devolves right into a highway journey through which the pious, shy, sweet-eating Doe is joyful to twist into thievery and the extra mouthy Muna turns into hostile to the purpose of smashing her greatest – and solely – pal’s cellphone. They’re grown-up sufficient to move by way of immigration, although Doe hasn’t travelled since she arrived within the UK. They’re savvy sufficient to get themselves throughout Turkey by way of a conniving combination of innocence and fraud. And it goes with out saying that they haven’t any clue what they’re stepping into.

With a wayward, if loving, mom, Doe has retreated right into a hardline, half-baked model of Islaam and desires to search out her resistance fighter crush, Samir (Ali Khan), throughout the border, the place they’ll stay in an Islamic State fairytale and escape the uncaring Western world which has allowed Assad’s murderous rampages to proceed unchecked. Though born within the UK, Muna is traumatised by a violent residence life and a racist world she lashes out towards: she may run in any path, however has chosen Syria as her method out from which there will probably be no return. She’s the least likeable of the pair, so a more durable job for the magnetic Ingar, who made a robust impression in a small half in Layla.

Quite a lot of time has gone into the preparation of the script for Brides, in growth since 2018, its casting, by Shaheen Baig, and performances. However the manufacturing itself – a UK/Italian co-pro with location work in Istanbul – is equally pleasing. From a seaside city in Wales, to the Turkish capital and on by way of the countryside to the Syrian border (shot in Sicily), Brides is woven seamlessly round its two leads. Music by Alex Baranowski trusts the story and works with it, by no means stating itself at the price of the fragile stability constructed up by Fall on this notable debut.