Brides director Nadia Fall: "This film is much more tender than people will assume"

But actually, it's not a girls trip that the teenagers are going on – they're heading to Syria under the spell of social media indoctrination, willing to risk it all for a life they've been led to believe holds purpose and meaning.

For anyone familiar with the news cycle, the story of teenage girls running away in secret to Syria will be a recognisable one. Most notably, the UK press became hyper-focused on the reporting of Shamima Begum, who travelled to Syria in 2015 aged 15 to join Islamic State (IS).

Fall recognises that, on the face of it, Brides digs into a controversial topic but the film is simply prompting its viewers to put themselves into the shoes of others. Speaking about the way in which Begum's case was handled at the time, Falls says that Begum (and others who made similar journeys) are "vilified and painted in such a particular light, without anybody trying to see it from their point of view, as young people and as legal children at the time".

While the film never explicitly mentions IS, the parallels are obviously clear. Rather than keeping these narratives as faceless, rid of personal stories and just simple headlines, Fall (along with writer Suhayla El-Bushra) craft such an emotional feast of a tale that it's hard not to sit up and take notice.

"First and foremost, for me, it's a film about female friendship, those really deep loves you have for your best friend growing up – and also about the teenage brain," Fall tells me.

Now serving as the new Artistic Director of London's Young Vic theatre, Fall says it's her and El-Bushra's theatre backgrounds – as well as Fall's work in pupil referral units and secondary schools – that has made her especially fascinated by the teenage brain. They're hardwired to take risky decisions, she explains, smiling at her own memories of the time and remarking that it's a wonder anyone survives those years.

"Usually we do because there are people around us that love us, hold us and society's on our side. Sometimes, when you don't feel like you belong or are made to feel like an outsider, you don't have that security. Young people are wonderful but are open to influence, open to taking risk, open to social media. So we did look at the push and the pull. We did look at social media. We looked at bullying, we looked at home life, we looked at indoctrination."

Fall says that El-Bushra did copious amounts of research around the real-life cases and quickly learnt that there wasn't a 'one size fits all' feeling to any of them, with Fall underlining that "there isn't one reason someone's radicalised".

In the film, that's aptly demonstrated by the fact that both Doe and Muna's motivations to leave England are very different. Where Doe is going for love and a deep-rooted crush, Muna is leaning towards the escapism aspect of it all and hoping to not feel like such an outsider anymore.

"The brilliant Adolescence series got all these plaudits for looking at inceldom and misogyny amongst teenage boys so beautifully, so tenderly. We accepted that, they didn't show us who was talking to them. They didn't demonstrate Andrew Tate-adjacent people online but we got it.

"So, similarly for this, we've got so much in the news about what happened in Syria. We all have the images from back then, we have podcasts and documentaries. Ours wasn't about that. Ours is about looking at it from a young person's point of view and flipping that script," Fall says.

With a lot of current conversation around radicalisation and extremism in various forms, the fact that this film is so pertinent at the time of its release does break Fall's heart, she admits.

"Over 10 years after the story is set, we're living in a very divided society. Those in power are really relishing pitting us against each other, across different value systems or religions, ethnicities or sexualities. I think it's all fake news. I think we've got far more in common as human beings than we have differences, and the arts really remind us of that.

"It's really, really important for our health. I know I sound like a big hippie when I say this – go to the cinema, sit in communion, go to the theatre, sit together with other strangers who might be different to you and process, look and put yourself in someone else's shoes. I mean, extremism happens on all sides from different religions, different political affiliations."

Fall states that she doesn't think Brides is a film about extremism, saying: "I think it's about loneliness and trying to belong... if people can make us feel wanted or seen, any group, any young person would follow that. That's why we need to provide alternatives. The online voice is very powerful and the algorithms are very powerful telling us what we need to hear to motivate us. We've got to fortify against it. We've got to speak to each other in real life and have conversations. We don't need to agree."

It'll probably be easy for plenty of prospective Brides viewers to go into it thinking it's one thing but Fall says that's all part of it, encouraging people to watch the film and make their own conclusions. "I just think this film is much more tender than people will assume," she says, highlighting the fact that Brides certainly doesn't have all the answers.

The social media of it all was an important part of the story that needed highlighting, with the idea of capturing the internet on screen being something that's often quite cringy to see in movies, Fall says.

One of the best sequences of Brides is the montage of Muna and Doe cradling their phones, swept up in social media posts and set to the backdrop of MIA's Bad Girls. Fall tells me that they used real-life footage and social media posts, the latter of which came as a surprise in terms of how many of the girls who were being indoctrinated were also talking about the "most mundane and girly things like kittens and Haribo sweets", Fall reveals.

In relation to the real-life girls who made that dangerous journey from Turkey to the Syrian border, Fall doesn't shy away from the fact that both she and El-Bushra "were really nervous about even tackling such a story". "We just thought, 'Are we going to do it justice? Are we going to add to more stereotypes about the Muslim diaspora and community?' That's not needed. But I think we just had to be brave and do it," she says.

Over the course of the film, we mainly observe the dynamics between Muna and Doe, which veer from sisterly to maternal and is a relationship that comes under a lot of stress throughout the 90 minutes. While it would've been easy to end the film on a specific and harrowing note, the film takes us back to the very first day that Doe and Muna meet in art class.

It's a surprising tone to finish Brides on for two reasons. Not only do you spend the duration of the film thinking that perhaps the pair have known each other for most of their lives, but the flashback also comes after the dawning and sobering realisation of Doe and Muna's fate as they reach Syria.

Fall says that there were "one or two people that tried to tell us to move that ending to the beginning and do it in a very chronological way", but simply put: "We didn't want that." For both Fall and El-Bushra, they wanted to end the film with some hope and redemption rather than the "pain porn" of some art that can be "too much to swallow and insurmountable".

The levity of the ending directly correlates to the lightness that comes with being a teenager, with Fall discussing how friendship is a deep and life-changing love. We may lose friends over the course of our lives but they're always etched in our memories, Fall says.

That unforgettable female bond is one that was also reinforced by working on a big team of women, Fall explains. "Actually, most of our HODs [heads of departments] were women, which is extremely rare in film," Fall says, describing how with that came a "shorthand and a sisterhood".

"That's not us just being woke – although it's great to be woke – it's us going, 'This isn't just morally right, it makes for a richer film because we've all been teenage girls'. We just knew and trusted each other. When time and money are short, you just have to hit the ground and trust each other. So, it really helped that people behind the camera were really diverse, global majority and women."

As well as eliciting sympathy for these two teenage girls, we're struck in one of the final images of the film by Doe's neighbourhood being etched with graffiti that reads: "Behead all Muslims."

The Islamophobia that the girls have to face in the film (which is set in 2014) is still rife, with an increase in far-right rhetoric leaving many people within the global majority feeling othered and terrified to leave their homes.

So how does it feel to release a film like Brides at a point in society where these topics feel more prevalent than ever?

"When you're from this diaspora, it's cyclical. I was a young person when 9/11 happened and that changed how my community was seen from then onwards. It's a lived experience for Suhayla and I. The world turns and decades on, we're at the same point. It's not accidental.

"There is a very blatant and unapologetic stoking of the hornets' nest by certain people that have the mic at the moment; wannabe politicians, social media moguls, people with a lot of power who very deliberately put a lot at the foot of Islam and the religion."

Fall continues: "We're not a monolith – we're different races, we don't speak one language, we're all different. Some of us have tattoos and some of us wear hijabs. This is just one small film that sheds light on it, but it's not going away and we can see it. We had a US president say things about a London mayor. You don't need to be a lefty artist like me to think that's just not on. But if people in great seats of power say these things, then it trickles down to the classroom. It trickles down to the office, it trickles down to the bus stop and we must fortify against hate speech."

Fall adds: "It's dangerous. It's not just dangerous for the Muslim community, it's dangerous for any community because you might be next – and that's how fascism works exactly."

With a film like Brides already under her feature film director's belt, it's already one that says so much and warrants the audience to sit with their own thoughts about a subject matter and narrative we haven't ever been prompted to think of in the mainstream.

Having worked with the likes of Michaela Coel and Aaron Pierre in some of their early career roles, Fall's hopes for the future revolve around platforming the "breadth and richness of stories, storytelling and people".

She says: "If I started going, 'Look, I'm going to make a play or a film about climate change or about Islamophobia', that would be like forcing audiences to take their cod liver oil and medicine. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to tell a story in a nuanced and, I hope, tender or rigorous way. Then, we'll draw our own conclusions."

For now, she's got a new season of Young Vic programming to keep her incredibly busy, kicking off with Entertaining Mr Sloane. It's "very bonkers, very Marmite", she beams. If her feature film debut is anything to go by, it'll be stellar. And if the industry actually stands up and pays attention to Brides, we'll hopefully see more of Fall's on-screen directing prowess sooner rather than later.

Brides is in UK & Irish cinemas now.

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