26/11/2024 - Tremendously toplined by Megan Northam, Mareike Engelhardt’s first feature is a hard-hitting and far-sighted work about the grey zones of radicalisation

"Here, a greater destiny awaits you." A total of 42,000 people hailing from 110 countries flocked to the banner of the "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016, a staggering recruitment phenomenon which the film world has already examined, exploring the reasons for these people’s departures (Heaven Will Wait [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Farewell to the Night [+see also:
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interview: André Téchiné
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trailer
interview: Mareike Engelhardt
film profile] - Mareike Engelhardt’s debut feature film released in French cinemas on 27 November, courtesy of Memento Distribution - has a fiction film immersed itself with such intensity and visceral intimacy and with so many paradoxes into the on-the-ground indoctrination of a young European woman who’d never seemed a likely candidate for falling victim to such tribulations.

"How high up do you think we are? I’ve never been so close to the sun” – “It’s beautiful” – “This is just the beginning, you’ll see…" In the plane that’s propelling them towards a new life which they imagine to be exhilarating ("making history") and which will turn their grey day-to-day lives as trainee nurses in France upside-down, Jessica (a fantastic Megan Northam) and Laïla (Natacha Krief), who are two typically uninhibited young women, make no bones of their happiness. Their plan is to join "the Islamic State" where Laïla will become Akram’s wife and Jessica will become his second wife. At 19 years of age, the latter feels ready to take the leap:  she’s learned Arabic and she demonstrates unfailing religious devotion.

But once they arrive in the mafada (a big house where women are segregated while waiting to be married) which is ruled over with an iron fist, ensconced in a velvet glove, by Madame (Lubna Azabal), Jessica finds a "family", rules and a daily life requiring absolute submission. Confused over past feelings ("over there, they didn’t listen to me, they didn’t respect me") and torn between contradictory intentions (an impulsive spirit aspiring to freedom and an ardent desire to prove herself), this young woman - renamed Rabia - slowly transforms (though not without psychological and physical suffering) and steps through the looking glass to become one of the torturers…

A hard-hitting and captivating female-led huis-clos, Rabia very delicately conveys the grey zones inhabiting the "banality of evil", charting a poignant personal journey and a voyage through darkness which is both novelistic and borderline documentarian (and buoyed by countless highly convincing little details). With stripped-back and highly concentrated emotional force - ideally captured by director of photography Agnès Godard - the film gives an incredibly accurate and intimate overview of a sensitive subject-area for the West ("if they’ve come here, it’s because there’s something fundamentally lacking in their lives. And your job is to find what that is and give it to them"). It’s offers a sharp observation of a state of malaise, which might explain why major international festivals have chosen to turn their backs on this promising work, which has nonetheless won multiple awards (notably from the audience and youth juries) in local gatherings (Deauville, Valenciennes, War on Screen, Arte Mare, Macon, Sarlat) these past few months.

Produced by French firm Films Grand Huit in co-production with Arte France Cinéma, Germany’s Starhaus Production and Belgium’s Kwassa Films and RTBF, Rabia is sold worldwide by Kinology.

(Translated from French)