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In Nadia Fall’s debut feature film, Brides, two teenage girls run away from Britain to join Islamic State in Syria, after being lured by social media posts promising freedom. If the story sounds familiar, it’s because it was inspired by real-life events.
Fall, the artistic director of the Young Vic, said: “I was doing a play with the writer Suhayla El-Bushra at the National [Theatre], and we were approached about making a film.
“At the time, the media was full of stories of young people that made that fateful journey to Syria, including Shamima Begum [the London teenager who travelled in secret to Syria to become an IS bride in 2015]. We noticed how those young women were so vilified. They were portrayed as monsters, and nobody was really seeing the experience from their point of view. We felt that that was really needed.”
The film, which premiered at Sundance and is released in cinemas this month, resists easy condemnation of its two protagonists (played by Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar). Instead, it traces their perilous journey through Turkey towards the Syrian border, during which they lose their passport and money, stay in a bus station clerk’s family home, survive a police chase, and hitchhike their way out of the city.
“It’s fictionalised, but we shaped our story according to real life acts,” Fall said. “We shot at the real bus station in Turkey where Shamima Begum and her friends waited. Even the social media stuff about kittens and ‘halal Haribo’ is real.”
Fall said she was inspired by “the greatest road movie of all time”, Thelma and Louise, as well as other films about young women like Andrea Arnold’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always. She drew on her past experience of working with young people, including in pupil referral units and mental health settings. The teenage brain, she said, had always fascinated her.
“As teenagers, we’re hardwired to take risk and make impulsive decisions. When people say, ‘Why do people make this journey?’, there’s no one size fits all. Our research showed there were so many different reasons.”
There is little discussion or analysis of terrorism in Brides. You never actually see the girls in Syria, and the word Isis is never used. For Fall, this was intentional: she wanted to focus on the intensity of adolescent friendships.
“It’s a love letter to teenage girls. There’s all sorts of incredible documentaries about Syria. We’ve watched the news, we know exactly what it was like on the other side of that border. For us it wasn’t about that, it was about the journey. What if they could have the freedom that they find on the journey and choose another path?”
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The film also cuts to images of war-torn Syria, far-right protests in Britain, and Nigel Farage, underlining the cyclical nature of events. “It’s mad how those images could have happened yesterday,” Fall said. “Farage, when we felt he’d gone away, is very much centre stage at the moment. The ‘unite the kingdom’ march was packed. People are being radicalised. They believe these narcissists in power who say: ‘that person is taking things away from you’. It’s divisive, it’s cynical, and it’s horrific.”
If Brides makes a plea, it is for empathy. “We go to the gym for our health, we eat well for our health, and similarly, we need to regularly practice the art of empathy. If we do it in communion with strangers at a cinema or a theatre, all the better.”
Fall herself grew up in Southwark and the Middle East, the daughter of south Asian parents. After training as a director, she became an associate at the National Theatre, then ran Stratford East, formerly known as Theatre Royal Stratford East, before taking over at the Young Vic. This month marks her first full season at the helm, and she is determined to start off bold.
The season opens with Fall directing Joe Orton’s cult queer classic Entertaining Mr Sloane. Also on the bill is Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer and Tony-nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, directed by Omar Elerian; and Arthur Miller’s rarely performed Broken Glass, revived by Jordan Fein.
The latter, written in response to the rise of fascism in Europe, centres on a Jewish woman in 1930s Brooklyn who becomes paralysed after reading about pogroms in Germany. “It asks: when terrible things happen in the world, what do you do? Ignore it, or stare right at it?” Fall said. Other plays explore austerity Britain and systemic injustices in British institutions.
The director said there was “something mischievous” about the new season, which was important at a time when “everything’s become a bit homogeneous”. She said funding cuts meant theatres were increasingly scared to take risks, “but that’s where the exciting stuff happens.”
She added: “It’s tough across the sector. Our buildings are falling apart. We need to pay staff. I wish that our government seemed more interested. Why don’t they extend the tax relief scheme? Why don’t they forgo the Covid loans?”
Fall also said that low pay and the rising costs of tickets could result in less diversity across the industry. “Would I celebrate a world where my theatre was packed, but each ticket was £300, which is what’s happening on Broadway? This is where the maths could lead us: theatre as a pastime for the elite.”
