Nadia Fall's Brides explores teenage friendship, hope and radicalisation

The National

29-01-2025

'I think a lot of people might want this film to go 'A plus B equals C' and give us an algebraic equation: Why do people get radicalised?' says director Nadia Fall, talking about her much-anticipated feature debut Brides. The story of two 15-year-old girls who leave the UK to travel to Syria, the movie is premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic strand. It raises questions about why youngsters join the terror group ISIS. 'Now, if we had a potion and a formula for that, we'd be millionaires,' continues Fall. 'But the point is every young person that makes this kind of decision has their own reason, and they're complex.' Fall, a playwright and the artistic director of Britain's Young Vic theatre, decided to explore the topic in 2016. She befriended Suhayla El-Bushra, who adapted Nikolai Erdman's play The Suicide, updating it to a South London council estate for Fall to direct at the National Theatre. Back then, the news was full of such stories – notably that of Shamima Begum, who journeyed from London to Syria in 2015 to become an ISIS bride. 'We were fascinated and disturbed,' says Fall, speaking to The National over Zoom. 'Oddly, we didn't want to tell the story, because we didn't want to vilify a community and start adding to the negative noise around the Muslim diaspora. But at the same time, we thought, 'Bloody hell, someone's got to tell this story. And it better be us.'' After collaborating on the 2019 short Bush, Fall and El-Bushra began prepping for a feature that deliberately avoids the topic of how ISIS recruits vulnerable youngsters. 'I'm really not into art that is like having your cod liver oil,' says Fall, who prefers to deliver her work without heavy-handed political messaging. 'I think art needs to have light and shade and debate and nuance. 'For us, we wanted to tell a story about female friendship and that very potent platonic love that young women especially have in their teenage years, with their best mate. You would die for your best friend, and at a time when teachers and parents feel like aliens, you grab on to your best friend for life.' Previously the artistic director at Theatre Royal Stratford East, Fall is well versed in working with young talent (including I May Destroy You's Michaela Coel, who starred in Fall's play Home). 'I'm fascinated by the adolescent brain, which is hard-wired to make risky decisions, and we all did it as young people – except most of us survive those decisions because we have, hopefully, a community around us or family that anchor us in some way, and we just about get through.' Set in 2014, Brides follows the introverted Doe (newcomer Ebada Hassan) and the more outgoing Muna (Safiyya Ingar, from Netflix's The Witcher). Both are subject to Islamophobia at school as Somali-born Doe becomes more devout in her Muslim faith, while Muna, who was born and raised in Britain by Pakistani parents, neither wears a headscarf nor attends the local mosque. 'Both Suhayla and I say that Doe and Muna are a bit of us,' says Fall. 'I'm a bit like Muna, and she's a bit like Doe.' Fall was born in London but spent her early years partly in Kuwait, where her South Asian parents lived and worked. Schooled by Carmelite Indian nuns in Kuwait City, she would spend summers back in the UK. When she moved to South London at the age of 10 to live with an aunt, she was immediately subjected to bullying. 'Within two weeks, I lost my accent and started to speak in the South London way I do now, because my head was shoved down the toilet, and I was alone, and I couldn't really contact my parents [in the] days before WhatsApp and Skyping and all of that.' It was a tough time for Fall, living in a country where Islamophobia was rife. 'After 9/11, I was really scared about talking about the fact that I'm Muslim. I don't really bring it up. I'm quite British in that way. I feel that religion is quite a private thing, not a thing for the state or politics. I just think that's your own issue, what you do.' Thankfully, she survived, studying French at degree level, completing a master's at London's Goldsmiths College and then moving into producing London fringe theatre before she joined the National Theatre. While Fall escaped a darker path, she refuses to point the finger at young people who get radicalised. 'I just think, 'How can you blame these young people?' On social media, they are in echo chambers [that go] 'That is your tribe. That is not your tribe.' Politicians and people that run social platforms try and provoke this idea that we're different to each other and that we aren't on this planet for a finite time trying to do our best.' So does Fall have an idea why Doe and Muna are recruited? 'I think they're going for different reasons. Some of it is a push, some of it's a pull. One of them has a crush on a boy. One of them has a terrible home life. They're bullied at school. 'There isn't one reason. And you know what? If we're going to be really honest, when we're teenagers, sometimes we need no reason to make the craziest decision because the teenage brain is impulsive and it only lives in the present tense.' A road movie destined to speak to youngsters, Fall's film is tender and concludes on a note of hope, rather than showing the difficulties that will probably befall Doe and Muna after making their risky journey. 'I don't want to see films or pieces of work that make me just watch trauma – people being chopped up and blown up or raped,' she says. 'It's just rehashing the trauma. And we think, 'God, this world is a terrible place. Why bother? Why bother getting out of bed? Nothing's going to change.' I always think hope is the most powerful and radical thing.' Brides screens at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday and Sunday