Sundance 2025 Review: BRIDES, Empathetic, Sympathetic Cautionary Tale

Deftly directed by Nadia Fall from Suhayla El-Bushra's multi-layered screenplay, Brides examines a relatively recent, ripped-from-the-headlines subject ripe for sensationalism and exploitation.

 

Namely, the subject is Western-born or -raised Muslim women who left the West behind for the illusory promises of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The film considers the subject with an admirable mix of sympathy, empathy, and compassion.

 

Asking the “why?” without explicit judgment or implicit bias, Fall crafts a sensitively moving film centered on two young women, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar), and the momentous, possibly fatal decision to leave the West and all its flaws and failures for the illusory promises of the Middle East.

 

We meet Doe and Muna already committed to boarding a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, leaving their families in England behind. For Doe, a devout born in Somalia, but since raised in the UK, and Muna, a far less observant Muslim born to Pakistani parents, staying in an England filled with everyday displays of racism, bigotry, and Islamophobia no longer seems a viable option. Add — or rather subtract — Doe’s mother, a Somali immigrant who’s since married a Caucasian Brit, and Muna’s parents, strict authoritarians obsessed with social conformism, and the promise of a better life, one supposedly filled with friendship, community, and respect seems the only and best choice.

 

Soon abandoned in Istanbul by a wayward guide, Doe and Muna are forced to fend for themselves, all while Doe dodges her mother’s calls and Muna, worried about Doe’s full commitment to their cause, watches her best friend warily for signs of doubt or a desire to return back to the UK. With funds low or gone, they’re also forced to rely on the kindness of strangers, first Zeynep (Cemre Ebuzziya), a helpful ticket agent who takes Doe and Muna back home with her for the night and later, Baris (Aziz Çapkurt), a widowed father of two taking his preteen daughters on a field trip of sorts.

 

Fall interweaves Doe and Muna’s stop-start journey to the Syrian border with character-revealing flashbacks of the individual and collective lives they left behind in the UK. Doe’s reticence and shyness do her no favors in high school, while Muna, far more outspoken and willing to challenge authority at every opportunity, finds herself tagged as a trouble-maker, especially when she lets her rage against the world get the better of her.

 

That, in turn, make Doe and Muna presumably easy marks for an online ISIS influencer. The influencer promises the women the stability, generosity, and respect of an Islamic-centered community. Doe’s reasons are more personal: her sometime boyfriend, Samir (Ali Khan), left the UK for Syria to fight against the now fallen Assad regime. His complete absence online after his departure doesn’t faze her. Instead, it steadies her resolve to reach ISIS and do her part for her newfound community against an irreligious authoritarian regime.

 

Unsurprisingly, Doe and Muna’s story functions less as a study in psychological realism and more a cautionary tale. The reality, of course, offered nothing of the kind. Ideals, however earnest and sincere, were no match for the brutality of ISIS.

 

Though audiences are left to imagine Doe and Muna’s fates as they approach the Turkey-Syria border, Fall ends Brides with one last flashback: Doe and Muna’s first meeting in art class, their differences outweighed by their commonalities, strangers in a strange land that refuses to accept them as their own, as fully deserving of the rights and privileges of an ordinary (Caucasian) British citizen.