They believed they no longer had any prospects in France. On the web, they consoled themselves in the virtual arms of the “fighters” of the terrorist organization Daesh before going to Syria to marry. But they did not imagine having an appointment with suffering and death. The tragic misadventure of thousands of young women is told by Mareike Engelhardt in her first film, Rabia, in theaters November 27.
Inspired by real events and following in the footsteps of Rabia, alias Jessica (Meghan Northam), the German filmmaker chronicles the daily life of a “madafa”, a house where women who are supposed to marry Daesh soldiers are gathered. The madafa depicted by Engelhardt is a well-oiled machine: it welcomes women from all over the world in their mother tongue, or failing that in English. Jessica and her girlfriend Laïla (Natacha Krief) falls into this hellish trap.
The motivations of the young women are clear from the first images of the fiction. Thus, we see Rabia cleaning the bed of an elderly person, backbreaking and apparently unrewarding work which partly explains his departure for Syria. And the adventure is experienced as a couple, notably with Laïla who has found a fiancé, Akhram, a Daesh soldier. In Raqqa, the final destination of a one-way ticket, the disappointments continue for Laïla.
Rabia thus loses her ally and becomes the toy of Madame (Lubna Azabal) who reigns over the madafa. Their face-to-face fuels a psychological intrigue whose twists and turns punctuate the narrative. Between the proclamation, in 2014, of the Caliphate (territories controlled by Daesh in Syria and Iraq) and the strikes of the international coalition which will liberate Raqqa in 2017, Mareike Engelhardt describes the other war in which Rabia and Madame are engaged. The claws of Daesh are above all those of an evil person who wants, among other things, to settle scores with a West whose codes she believes she has mastered in order to help destroy it. The character of Madame is a fictional double of the Moroccan Fatiha Mejjati, alias Oum Adam, nicknamed “the black widow”. She is now a criminal on the run.
Gradually, Mareike Engelhardt shows how Madame dampens the hopes of Rabia who aspires to be useful in jihad. In France, confides the young woman, she did not want to become the“slave” of a society that did not see it. Meghan Northam’s facial expressions and body language are enough to enter Rabia’s tormented world. In trying to resist the predatory and oppressive operation of Madame’s lucrative business, she discovers the other side of a system that deceived her.
Meghan Northam and Lubna Azabal are remarkable in a drama about the ordeal of those who joined the ranks of Daesh and who were often reduced to sex slaves. Voluntary servitude, conscription, enslavement, resilience and emancipation are explored in Rabia. The feature film is a fiction but it has the value of a document: it illustrates the reasons which push young women to inflict the worst on themselves even though they wanted a better life. Like the movie The Horses of God (2012) by Nabil Ayouch, the feature film by Mareike Engelhardt dissects the phenomena of radicalization and recruitment that jihadists have orchestrated throughout the world.
Genre : Drama
Filmmaker: Mareike Engelhardt
Interpreters : Megan Northam, Lubna Azabal, Natacha Krief
Pays : France, Belgium
Duration :1h34 min
Sortie : November 27 2024
Distributer :Memento Distribution
Synopsis : Driven by the promises of a new life, Jessica, a 19-year-old French girl, leaves for Syria to join Daesh. Arriving in Raqqa, she joins a house for future wives of fighters and quickly finds herself the prisoner of Madame, the charismatic director who holds the place with an iron fist.
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