Alan in Belfast: Brides – radicalisation and neglect conspire to persuade two girls to leave England for Syria (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 26 September)

The title of Nadia Fall’s debut feature – Brides – gives the context to two teenage girls’ journey to Syria. Their backstories differ, but a significant event we’ll only see late on in the 93-minute film explains why they came to be firm friends, and why they stick by each other no matter what’s thrown in their way.

It’s 2014, and the Conservative Party are promising an EU Membership referendum if they win the next general election. English nationalist sentiment is on the rise. Islamophobia is rife in Doe and Muna’s lives when they set off to fly to Turkey where they expect to be met by someone they’ve been messaging, to travel onward to Syria. The plan falls apart, multiple times, and the film’s script and direction give time for the audience to be left wondering for a few minutes whether each new crisis will be the point the girls see sense and turn back. Along the way Doe and Muna benefit from the kindness of strangers, and the concern of one woman who doesn’t believe their story adds up.

(While Brides never mentions ISIS by name, the script’s timeframe coincides with the well-known journey of Shamima Begum who left London in 2015 and entered Syria to join the Islamic State at the age of 15.)

Ebada Hassan – making a very impressive debut – delivers a captivating performance as Somalia-born Doe, a student who experiences unchallenged bullying at school and a less-than-ideal homelife. The only people who seem to respect her are Muna and an older lad, Samir (Ali Khan), who she’s sweet on.

Safiyya Ingar plays Muna, a loudmouth who is no longer a devout Muslim. She lives in a much classier house with her Pakistani parents. Standing up to bullies at school, she knows first-hand about domestic violence at home.

While Doe is an introvert, she is adamant about the quest they’ve embarked on, and proves very resourceful to keep them on course. Muna is the much rougher and more outgoing of the two, with Ingar revelling in the freedom to bring this confident character to life. Together they’re 15-year-olds who can play with makeup and enjoy drinking milkshakes. They’re also young women who firmly believe “who’s going to give a shit about two brown girls” who have run away.

As Doe and Muna’s home life and experience in school is gradually revealed, their impetus to leave England and travel to Syria becomes ever more relatable. Online persuasion and false stories of a perfect life in Syrian are part of their story, and we realise that if they reach Syria, they will potentially become part of the grooming of the next generation of ‘brides’.

But their decision is less about radicalisation and more about avoidable neglect. The actions and attitudes of the adults in their lives (chiefly parents and teachers) who made it feel like an attractive option, become more questionable and much more to blame.

While the audience and the characters understand what they’re running away from, there is less certainty about what they’re heading towards. Suhayla El-Bushra’s screenplay and Nadia Fall’s direction let us hear but not see what that new life might be like … and it doesn’t match up to the rosy utopia Doe was promised online.

This is a sensitive exploration of how radicalisation can succeed in attracting moderate people who have been let down by everyone and everything that should be protecting them. Some of the lessons in Brides extend beyond the immediate context of the film’s plot and also speak into the radicalisation of young males in the west.

Brides is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 26 September.