Brides: teen runaway movie tackles a dark subject with a fizzy teen spirit

“Who’s going to give a shit about two brown girls?” snaps brusque Muna (Safiyya Ingar) to fellow runaway Doe (an anxious Ebada Hassan) to squash her fears about police capture as they bolt for Syria. But first-time director Nadia Fall cares fiercely about their fate in this surprisingly empathetic feature, inspired by the 2015 Bethnal Green trio vilified for fleeing the UK to become jihadi brides.

Fall and writer Suhayla El-Bushra (co-writer of We Are Lady Parts, 2021) are both Muslim women and the film deftly bottles a recklessly fizzy teen spirit. Brides keeps its camera second-skin close to the girls, adopting their point of view throughout the bumpy cross-Turkey quest. Strictly the runaways’ own tale, shorn of thriller tropes, El-Bushra’s sensitive script digs deep into what’s pulling and what’s pushing them, as they make a nervy Heathrow exit. Naive hopes for an Isis escort pop like bubblegum when they find themselves abandoned at Istanbul airport, and Doe’s wild scheme for them to bus to the border alone transforms the film into a risk-taking road movie.

Unlike the 2020 TV series Caliphate, with its Isis-recruiting teacher, there are no villainous proselytisers behind their decision. Just the sympathetic-sounding Syrian ‘Hanan’, whose online videos, glimpsed on Doe’s phone, assure them that a warm welcome and Haribos await. These are no teen terrorists (Isis and jihad are never mentioned) but El-Bushra’s telling flashbacks smartly point up how appalled gentle pious Doe is by Syrian suffering, and how impressed she is by her crush Samir’s decision to become a Syrian fighter. Fall keeps Doe’s frequent flashbacks quick and piercing, painting a home (and a hometown) that is unnervingly hostile, scarily full of her mother’s violent English partner and virulent school kid racism.

Once the pair’s episodic but engaging road-trip is underway, the film packs it with relatable teen mishaps – rows, thefts, missed buses – but cranks up the added tension of their fugitive status steadily. Idle airport waits give way to dynamic location shooting, Istanbul both a playground (giggly sightseeing, gobbling market sweets) and ever-perilous (predatory men grab at them in nighttime cafés). However, Fall tempers her empathy with insight, flashing back to Muna’s trouble-making aggression at home – yelling bomb threats to a racist passerby, or delivering a nose-breaking punch during a schoolyard brawl. A pulse-pounding police chase round a bus station shows off how the film can switch tones and themes skilfully to place the viewer in exquisite discomfort, unsure whether to cheer the girls on or dread their possible escape.

As the border gets nearer, the relationship at the heart of the film gets pricklier, the girls get less sure, and wilder with one another. Cleverly, the sense of playful innocence that Fall and El-Bushra have cast over the film makes the mounting risks feel more suspenseful than the ever-dangling prospect of rescue. Packed with teen giddiness, the film captures the girls running through famous TV chefs in a game of ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’ while they snarf down Heathrow burgers; the scene recalls the exuberant portraits of teens in Girlhood (2014) and Rocks (2019). As events throw them on to the kindness of strangers, there’s a lovely interlude where a worried Istanbul bus worker offers them a bed for the night. Sentimentality is never allowed to creep in, however, as a racist dig about Doe and a luck-changing theft propel them onwards.

When the going gets tough, there’s delight in seeing Doe, at first a fearful introvert, flower Thelma & Louise-style into a charming blagger. But that goes along with concern at seeing Muna’s swagger melt into mulish unease. Early on, when Doe is the conduit for the flashbacks, the film feels lopsided – we wonder what’s driving the wisecracking Muna. The late revelation, when it comes, knocks the wind out of you. Of the film’s two fine central performances, Ingar’s charismatic hard-headed Muna does the heavy lifting, but the non-professional Hassan, whose eyes well with forbidden longing for her mother, is also impressive. Doe is a child-woman, her phone an umbilical cord tethering her to her mother, who keeps sending her frantic messages, and this creates a near-fatal rift in the bond that is all that sustains the girls. 

This is a film about friendship, not fanaticism – a ride-or-die friendship, which saved the girls in the hostile UK, but which jeopardises them as the stakes get higher. Muna’s watchword “No bailing” sets up their friendship as a sacred bond, and that is possibly the most dangerous decision they make. Muna and Doe run away not to build a caliphate but to belong somewhere, not realising that they already belong to each other.

► Brides is in UK cinemas from 26 September.