‘Brides’: Sundance Review

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

England, 2014, and a Somali teenager leaves her council house in the early hours of the morning with a stuffed backpack to the words: ‘Bismillah, in the name of Allah, the great and compassionate’. This film is called Brides and we immediately know where we are: in the world of Shamima Begum and the three 15 year-old ‘Isis Brides’ of East London who ran away to Syria. This is not Begum’s life story – that’s available via the grim doc The Shamima Begum Story. Nadia Fall’s excellent, compact drama/road film dances with her shadow and that of her dead friends, and emerges all the more powerful because of its proximity to it.

Part of what makes Brides so engaging is its closeness to the truth

Nadia Fall is the artistic director of London’s Young Vic, the former artistic director of Stratford East and the director of at least 10 plays at the UK’s venerable National Theatre: her film debut will not go un-noticed for that fact, even though it’s more likely that any future cinema career might track that of the NT’s outgoing AD Rufus Norris (Broken, London Road), so packed is her schedule. This story may be well documented in European cinema, for example, but Brides is a novel film for the UK and other Anglo markets, and its two brilliant young stars are destined for positive notices anywhere the film travels following its world premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

Part of what makes Brides so engaging — and not in a passive way – is its closeness to the truth: not just of the Begum story, but life truths. The childishness of 15 year-olds, their slyness, rage, sudden tempests, hostility, vulnerability and inexperience: a volatile high-stakes mix before it is seasoned with racism and the exclusion and loneliness of growing up brown in a poor seaside town. Doe (terrific newcomer and open-call-cast Ebada Hassan) is a devout Muslim girl – unlike her mother (Yusra Warsama) – who arrived in the UK at the age of three. Loud-mouthed spitfire Muna (Safiyya Ingar) is a trouble-maker of Pakistani descent and the natural leader of these best friends and unlikely allies.

The screenplay, written by Suhayla El-Bushra, consistently frustrates expectations and almost invites resistance. Doe and Muna land in Istanbul airport without the viewer knowing anything about their backgrounds, or even their names. The film seemingly promises a journey to the horrors of Syria for two innocent teenagers, but immediately devolves into a road trip in which the pious, shy, sweet-eating Doe is happy to twist into thievery and the more mouthy Muna becomes hostile to the point of smashing her best – and only – friend’s phone. They’re grown-up enough to pass through immigration, despite the fact that Doe hasn’t travelled since she arrived in the UK. They’re savvy enough to get themselves across Turkey through a conniving mixture of innocence and fraud. And it goes without saying that they have no clue what they are getting into.

With a wayward, if loving, mother, Doe has retreated into a hardline, half-baked version of Islaam and wants to find her resistance fighter crush, Samir (Ali Khan), across the border, where they’ll live in an Islamic State fairytale and escape the uncaring Western world which has allowed Assad’s murderous rampages to continue unchecked. Although born in the UK, Muna is traumatised by a violent home life and a racist world she lashes out against: she could run in any direction, but has chosen Syria as her way out from which there will be no return. She’s the least likeable of the pair, so a tougher job for the magnetic Ingar, who made a strong impression in a small part in Layla.

A lot of time has gone into the preparation of the script for Brides, in development since 2018, its casting, by Shaheen Baig, and performances. But the production itself – a UK/Italian co-pro with location work in Istanbul – is equally pleasing. From a seaside town in Wales, to the Turkish capital and on through the countryside to the Syrian border (shot in Sicily), Brides is woven seamlessly around its two leads. Music by Alex Baranowski trusts the story and works with it, never stating itself at the cost of the delicate balance built up by Fall in this notable debut.