EIFF 2025: Brides
Inspired by real stories, this intimate two-hander of friendship and teenage angst follows two girls on a one-way journey to Syria
Nadia Fall’s Brides plays like a buddy comedy with an impenetrable heart. The noted theatre director keeps the spotlight on her teenage protagonists throughout this humanising portrait of girlhood. Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) are ride-or-die friends, unprepared for the horror looming outside the bubble they’ve created for themselves. As they’re seeking a place to belong in the face of racist schoolmates and dysfunctional, abusive families, their loneliness offers a crevice for radicalisation to sneak in and fester.
Set in 2014, the movie is inspired by cases like that of Shemima Begum and other so-called ISIS brides, retracing their steps in a fictionalised account and making a road trip out of an emotionally and politically charged theme. Brides attempts to fill the gaps and find some shreds of empathy in those sensationalised news stories, striking a chord with tenderness and levity. But the film never uses the girls’ young age against them to explain their actions. Doe and Muna are young women pushed to extremes in a coming-of-age that feels all the more harrowing when it suggests there may be no bright future to look forward to.
Existing in the limbo before the protagonists would inevitably become headline fodder, the film ropes the audience into their joyous banter and the fleeting connections they make along the way. Unlike its protagonists’ steadfast determination to complete their journey, Brides' narrative is uneven. Brace for a bumpy ride as the film struggles to get to the core of an inconceivable decision, remaining on the surface of what could’ve been its most affecting elements.
Brides had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 and released in the UK on 26 Sep by Vue Lumière, certificate TBC