In this not at all free world

British filmmakers have a real mastery of getting their hands dirty with burnt-out youth, offering a realistic insight into their own country.Shane Meadows' This is England (2006) chronicled the 1980s and skinheads, Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) the addictions of the 1990s, East is East (Ayub Khan-Din,1999) the second generations grappling with their new homeland, Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) the contradictions of multiculturalism and marginality. These filmmakers have the grace to bring society's knots to the surface by relying on instability, insecurity, and a sense of adolescent immortality. Risky, but ultimately consistent: they are extremes that act as megaphones for each other.

This is how Nadia Fall's Brides-Young Brides tells the story of Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingard) who from East London, where they grew up, fly to Turkey, from where they reach Syria and the 'pure hearts' of Isis fighters. Convinced of the drastic nature of their decision, united by a friendship that is sisterhood, they leave England to abandon a community they consider blasphemous and racist and family situations of social degradation. Doe, who arrived in Britain when she was three years old from Somalia, does not like her mother's libertine style, which is accompanied by a violent Englishman. She therefore takes refuge in Islamism of her own accord, which becomes her skeleton and moral support. Muna is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant and has behind her a patriarchal family, destroyed by social isolation. That is why she is impetuous, insolent, and her every gesture is a belligerent challenge to the malaise amplified by the school where the professors are floundering: they are on the front line and lack the tools to deal with social change. Thus, when Doe is attacked for wearing a headscarf by a schoolmate, Muna comes to her friend's rescue with a heavy-handed physical reaction. The ensuing punishment and misunderstandings are the trigger for the escape.

Nadia Fall is making her film debut, but has many successes as a theatre director behind her. This is evident from her ability to dig into the script, written by Suhayla El-Bushra, bringing out all the nuances of an evolving country, without taking moralising or partisan positions. Even the boy who bullies Doe is in such an economic condition that he has to accept charity from Islamic communities. Fall started thinking about a road movie on this theme after learning about young women from East London who had left England in 2014 to join the foreign fighters. The inspiration, as a British citizen of Muslim faith with origins in South East Asia, was to understand the motivations for the choice along with the impulses of an impulsive age, where often, behind the ideal causes, personal difficulties are hidden. Islam is in the background, although it is pointed out how the message of religious peace is distorted by extremism, aided by social media mystification.

Adding credibility to the story is excellent casting (by Shaheen Baig): from the choice of newcomer Ebada Hassan for Doe, dreamy, sweet, but resolute, to the exceptional Safuyya Ingar (Layla, The Witcher), perfect in the triple spectrum of bravado-exuberance-rage, meekly devoted to Doe, the only person who knows how to show her love and affection. Brides-Young Brides is a film produced, scripted, and directed mostly in the female line, including in the cinematography by Clarissa Cappellano. If Fall does not make Pindaric flights of direction, Fiona Desouza's editing runs to new registers, between races back and forth in time and black spaces that leave the spectator disoriented. Just as happens in front of the radicalisation of two young people, who have grown up in a democracy, albeit at its margins. Doubts and perplexity flare up in tune with the protagonists themselves: on the threshold of the border with Syria, the film does not tell us what will happen, the title suggests.

4 out of 5 stars