(AFP) “Okay, um … My name’s Shamima. I’m from the UK. I’m 19.”
Spoken with a nervous laugh, the introduction to a room full of women and restless babies could be the start of any young mothers’ support group.
But the speaker is Shamima Begum, the teenage “ISIS bride” who left Britain for Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State group, and whose desire to return sparked a right-wing press frenzy that saw her stripped of her citizenship.
The footage is captured in “The Return: Life After ISIS,” a documentary premiering Wednesday at the online Texas-based South By Southwest festival.
Spanish director Alba Sotorra got rare, extensive access to Begum and other Western women over several months in Syria’s Kurdish-run Roj camp, where they remain following the so-called caliphate’s collapse in 2019.
