Everyone knows something about the rise of ISIS and their temporary establishment of an Islamic state on the borders of Iraq and Kurdistan. We probably know that they operated by radicalising vulnerable young men, some from Western countries, to be their soldiers, and hoped for territorial expansion but were quickly defeated and consigned to the dustbin of history. Being radical Islamists (like the Taliban in Afghanistan) it's no surprise that their regime was a patriarchy, treating women as objects to own, use and abuse, and the effect of that regime on the lives of various women is the subject of this film.
There are three stories, all true. The small amount of information here is incorrect and confusing. It says the stories are "intertwined". I was expecting the woman soldier to maybe fight against the radicalised son or rescue the slaves, but I didn't see any direct connection between the stories. Also, only one of the three women is "living under ISIS".
A woman in Spain loses contact with her son as he is radicalised and travels to the Middle East. A young Kurdish woman flees when ISIS takes over in her city. Concerned for relatives who didn't escape, she decides to become a soldier and fight against the invaders. Another woman, enslaved with her young family, is regularly raped by her 'owner'. When he sends her pre-teen son away for indoctrination and threatens to rape her young teen daughter, she is forced to act.
The acting is great, the pacing is good and the movie makes its fairly obvious points very well. This kind of subject can scarcely be entertainment but, unlike similar films I've seen recently, there is something for viewers to hope for in each of the stories and not all of the outcomes are bad. It might have been better to tell the three stories as separate segments, but it's a good film and works fine as it is.
