Culture Representation: Taking place in Belgium and in Syria, from 2013 to 2016, the dramatic film “Rebel” features a predominantly Middle Eastern cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An amateur rapper in his 20s moves from Belgium to Syria to help war victims, but he is forced to join ISIS, while his adolescent brother is torn between obeying his mother’s wishes to be a good student in Belgium or running away to Syria to reunite with his brother.
Culture Audience: “Rebel” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in seeing somewhat unconventional dramas about families who have internal conflicts about controversial politics and terrorism.
Aboubakr Bensaihi in “Rebel” (Photo courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures)
“Rebel” is a gripping story about a family torn apart by political extremism. Although this 135-minute drama is a little too long and needed tighter film editing, the story and performances are worth watching. “Rebel” has some music-video-styled interludes (where people break into a hip-hop performance, including having backup dancers) that are very unusual for a film with this subject matter. Some viewers will appreciate the film for having this non-traditional approach. Other viewers will dislike these musical scenes for being too distracting or too disruptive to the movie’s serious tone.
Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, “Rebel” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. El Arbi, Fallah, Kevin Meul and Jan van Dyck co-wrote the “Rebel” screenplay. The movie alternates between showing the contrasting lives of two brothers and how their lives could be on a collision course to tragedy. “Rebel” is told in non-chronological order, but the movie shows the year in which a major scene is taking place.
When viewers first see 12-year-old Nassim Wasaki (played by Amir El Arbi), it’s 2015, and he thinks he is having a normal day at his school in the Brussels suburb of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (also known as Molenbeek), Belgium. Nassim is the son of a Moroccan immigrant named Leila Wasaki (played by Lubna Azabal), who is a single mother. On this particular day, Nassim is taken out of his classroom and sent to the school principal’s office, where a tearful Leila hugs him.
What’s the reason for this emergency visit? Leila’s older son Kamal Wasaki (played by Aboubakr Bensaihi) has been identified in the media as being part of a group of ISIS terrorists who were filmed on video executing people by shooting them. A TV news report says that Kamal was a local celebrity rapper using the stage name DJ Kawas, but he disappeared several months ago after drugs were found in his family’s garage.
Flashbacks show that Kamal had a history of getting in trouble with the law in Belgium, but this drug bust was the last straw for Leila, who told Kamal that he was no longer welcome in her home. Nassim, who has always looked up to Kamal, is devastated that Kamal has to move out of the family house. A homeless and aimless Kamal eventually met some people who convinced him to move to Syria to help war victims.
Kamal sees this relocation as an opportunity to turn his life around for the better, because he thinks he will be involved in a worthy charitable cause. Kamal finds out too late that he has really been recruited to join ISIS, along with several other young men from Syria and other countries. Kamal is forced into this ISIS recruitment program and is held captive, as he trains to be an ISIS soldier. Kamal eventually gets a new name while he is under ISIS control: Abu-Bakr Al-Belgik. A terrorist named Abu Amar (played by Younes Bouab) is also part of the story.
“Rebel” shows how the scandal of Kamal’s involvement with ISIS is processed differently by Leila and Nassim. Leila feels a lot of shame but also determination not to let Nassim fall prey to the same recruiters. Nassim has a childlike gullibility or ignorance in not fully understanding what Kamal is doing in Syria. Even though Nassim sees the news reports and videos on social media that show Nassim is now an ISIS soldier who kills people, in Nassim’s mind, he thinks that Kamal is helping people in Syria.
Meanwhile, Leila goes to support group meetings with other people whose loved ones have become lost in the grips of ISIS recruitment. Nassim slowly begins to see how Kamal’s activities are affecting their family’s reputation in Belgium. More people start to shun or avoid Nassim and Leila, who wants to protect Nassim from a lot of the trauma she is experiencing.
Nassim’s female classmate Hind (played by Malak Sebar) is his closest friend at school. At first, Hind is curious about Kamal and asks Nassim about him. Nassim tells her that Kamal is helping people in Syria. But when Hind’s parents find out that this is what Nassim thinks of Kamal, the parents greatly disapprove. Hind goes from not being allowed by her parents to sit next to Nassim on class, to not being allowed to hang out with him, to being pulled out of the school altogether, so Hind won’t have to see Nassim at all in school.
Meanwhile, an ISIS recruiter named Idriss (played by Fouad Hajji) has been hanging out at the schoolyard to talk to Nassim. It should come as no surprise that Idriss uses Nassim’s desperate desire to see Kamal as bait in these recruitment efforts. Idriss tells Nassim that Kamal very much wants to see Nassim, but that the only way is for Nassim to secretly go to Syria. Idriss says he will pay for the trip and be Nassim’s chaperone. The movie shows what Nassm’s decision is.
The middle section of “Rebel” tends to drag with repetitive scenes of shootouts and people being tortured. Viewers see that during this dark period in Kamal’s life, he found some brightness by meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a woman named Noor (played by Tara Abboud), who knows that Kamal is being forced to do ISIS activities. Kamal is faced with a moral dilemma when it comes to Noor, and his decision is the catalyst for many other things that happen in the story.
“Rebel” has good acting overall but not anything outstanding enough to get major awards. The movie has some visually ambitious and artistic scenes, but some of the narrative doesn’t flow very smoothly because of the way the movie’s non-chronological timeline has some jumbled editing. The last third of the movie is when “Rebel” is at its best in its intended emotional impact. Viewers who are patient enough to watch this entire movie might be left stunned by the outcome of events depicted in “Rebel.”
Yellow Veil Pictures released “Rebel” in select U.S. cinemas on September 15, 2023. The movie was released in Morocco and in parts of Europe and Asia in 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in London and in Syria, in 2014, the dramatic film “Profile” features a cast of white and Middle Eastern characters (with one black person) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A British journalist creates an online persona for a news exposé on how jihadist terrorists in Syria recruit young Western women to become members of their ISIS militant groups, and the journalist gets emotionally involved with the man who is the focus of her investigation.
Culture Audience: “Profile” will appeal primarily to people interested in a story that intersects between investigative journalism and online seduction.
Valene Kane and Shazad Latif in “Profile” (Photo courtesy of Bazelevs and Focus Features)
Years ago, NBC’s news investigation series “Dateline” had a segment called “To Catch a Predator,” which was about arresting sexual predators who use the Internet to target children. The suspenseful dramatic film “Profile” could have been subtitled “To Catch a Terrorist Predator,” since the movie depicts an investigation into how male ISIS terrorists in Syria lure Western teenage girls and young women into doing their bidding. The story in “Profile,” directed by Timur Bekmambetov, takes place over several weeks in 2014. And it’s a mostly well-paced thriller that’s not just about the investigation but it’s also about the dangers of creating a fake online persona and letting it take over your real life.
The “Profile” screenplay was written by Timur Bekmambetov, Britt Poulton and Olga Kharina. It probably helped to have women as two-thirds of this movie’s screenwriting team, since the protagonist in “Profile” is a female journalist who has to be written and portrayed as believable, in order for viewers to understand some of the decisions that she makes. “Profile” is based on the non-fiction book “In the Skin of a Jihadist” by a French journalist with the alias Anna Erelle, who has 24-hour security protection because of what she uncovered during her investigation.
In “Profile,” London-based freelance journalist Amy Whittaker (played by Valene Kane) has gotten an investigative assignment that she’s pitched to an unnamed TV network. Amy wants to find out how hundreds of young Western women and girls (some as young as 12 to 14 years old), who were usually raised as Christians, have radically changed their lives to convert to Islam, move to Syria, and live as extreme jihadists for ISIS. In order to expose the grooming process, Amy has decided that she will create a fake online profile and pretend to be a young woman who will be “bait” for one of the male jihadists.
At the beginning of the story, Amy is under a lot of stress because she’s overdue on her rent, and her assignment editor Vick (played by Christine Adams) is pressuring Amy to wrap up the investigation so that the TV network can have the story by the expected deadline. Amy creates a fake online persona named Melody Nelson, with her profile avatar as Snow White wearing a hijab and holding a lollipop. In real life, Amy is in her 30s, but she decides that her alter ego Melody will be 19 years old. Amy was originally going to make Melody 25 years old, but her research found that the terrorists prefer to lure teenage girls into their jihadist lifestyles.
Soon after Amy “likes” a jihadist ideology video that’s posted on social media, she is contacted by a terrorist in Syria named Abu Bilel Al-Britani (played by Shazad Latif), who likes to be called Bilel. And their “courtship” begins. Bilel, who is in his late 20s or early 30s, was born and raised in London, but he grew to hate the United Kingdom and other Western countries. As an adult, he moved to Syria, where he has become a middle-ranking leader of a group of terrorists.
Bilel (whose online avatar is a snarling lion) is charming and overly flattering with Melody. Amy portrays Melody as a vulnerable and lonely orphaned teenager in East London who has converted to Islam because she became disillusioned with Christian beliefs. As Melody, Amy pretends to be in awe of Bilel and comes across as someone who enthusiastically shares his beliefs that his ISIS activities are for a good cause. When she asks Bilel what his job is, he doesn’t hesitate to proudly tell her: “Killing people.”
Amy is somewhat caught off-guard when Bilel immediately begins trying to sell Melody on the idea that her life is an overpriced rut in England and that she’s better off being in Syria, where he says that she will be treated like a queen. Soon after they start messaging each other online, Bilel tells Melody that Syria is a great place to live. And he doesn’t waste time in insisting that they take their conversations to video chats on Skype.
And so, there’s an extended sequence of Amy quickly getting a crash course on how to give the appearance of being the perfect naïve target for an ISIS predator. Amy uses YouTube for makeup tutorials to apply makeup that will make her look younger and for instructions on strict Muslim traditions, such as wearing a jihab and gender rules. She also goes on YouTube and other social media to see first-hand accounts of teenage girls in the United States and Europe who were seduced into moving to the Middle East to become wives and concubines of jihadist terrorists and ended up becoming sex slaves.
One teenager’s story particularly touches Amy: Taylor Conger (played by Eloise Thomas) was a 14-year-old British loner who chronicled her life on YouTube. At some point, Taylor decided to upend her life, moved to Syria, and became an ISIS militant and the wife of a jihadist. What happens to Taylor is detailed later in the movie. As part of Amy’s research from social media videos that were made by radicalized Western teens, Melody uses some of the same words in her conversations with Bilel to explain why she’s seeking a big change in her isolated and depressing life.
During this investigation, Amy has been making plans to move in with her boyfriend Matt (played by Morgan Watkins), who’s aware that Amy is investigating an ISIS terrorist by creating a fake online persona. Matt finds a place that he likes and shows it to Amy during a video chat, but Amy prefers another home that they found because it has a garden for her dog Sparky. They eventually settle on the place that’s Amy’s first choice.
Amy also has an energetic and somewhat nosy friend named Kathy Pallary (played by Emma Cater), who is always trying to get homebody Amy to do things like go shopping with her or have dinner with her. Amy has confided in Kathy about her investigation. And you know that that means: Kathy wants to eventually see what Amy has uncovered.
The TV network has offered information technology (IT) assistance to Amy in her investigation. And so, an IT employee named Lou Kabir (played by Amir Rahimzadeh), who works for the TV network, is introduced to Amy through Skype. He coaches her on how to navigate the fake online accounts she’s created so that she can simultaneously use her real online accounts, in case she needs to switch back and forth with ease.
During Lou’s first online meeting with Amy, he mentions offhand that his mother is from Syria. After their conversation, Amy expresses concerns to Vick about Lou’s ethnicity and wonders out loud if Lou might tell his mother about the investigation and what might happen if Lou’s mother knows a terrorist. Vick, who says that Lou’s mother has lived in England for decades, admonishes Amy for being paranoid and racist. And it actually is very hypocritical for Amy to think this way, because she’s the one who’s been indiscreet about the investigation, having already told Matt and Kathy about it.
When Melody and Bilel meet each other for the first time, Amy has to pretend to be someone who’s attracted enough to Bilel to easily fall in love with him. She acts shy, deferential and coquettish. She tells Bilel that she’s 19. And when he asks her if she’s a virgin, she says yes. Amy secretly video records the Skype conversations that she has with Bilel.
The rest of the movie is a psychological back-and-forth over who’s really doing the more successful con game: the terrorist or the journalist? Because most of the movie consists of Skype conversations and messaging on social media, “Profile” keeps a lot of the suspense going with plot contrivances, such as Matt and Kathy unknowingly interrupting Amy when she’s on Skype chats with Bilel. Amy usually has to ignore their messages when she’s with Bilel. And eventually, Amy gets so caught up in the investigation that it starts to take a toll on her relationship with Matt.
Meanwhile, Vick’s patience starts to wear thin, as Amy keeps delaying the end of the investigation because Amy thinks she can find information that can not only expose the Bilel’s recruitment tactics but also find a way that he can be captured. Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch for Amy to suddenly start thinking that she can be like an MI6 operative, but a lot of investigative journalists can develop grandiose and ambitious goals when they get very caught up in their investigations.
Bilel initially comes across as very confident and assertive, but he eventually shows a vulnerable side to Melody when he opens up to her about his troubled family history. It’s a turning point in their relationship, because it triggers Amy to reveal to Bilel that she has her own struggles with a family tragedy that still haunts her. Telling Bilel her big family secret is a crack in her façade, because viewers will get the impression that although Amy told this story as Melody, the story is really what happened to Amy.
Viewers will have to suspend some disbelief in a few areas of the movie. For example, Bilel is paranoid about being exposed by journalists and government spies. And yet, he’s all over social media bragging about his misdeeds, without any attempts to hide his face and disguise his voice. Bilel also never does a Google search on any photos of Melody. Because if he did, he would find out that she looks exactly like a London journalist named Amy Whittaker who’s on social media.
However, Bilel isn’t a complete fool. Amy never really looks as young as 19, and Bilel is suspicious of how old Melody really is. Eventually, he confronts Melody and demands that she tell him what her real age is. Amy has to decide if she’s going to stick with the lie or confess something that’s more believable.
Amy’s undercover work starts to spill over into her real life. When she sees a report that ISIS terrorists have co-opted the hand gesture of pointing an index finger upright (the way some people indicate the number one), Amy gets paranoid when she sees a social media photo of Kathy making the same gesture. For a brief moment, Amy wonders if Kathy is a secret terrorist until Kathy explains that she made the gesture as that it was one more day until her celebration of the upcoming holiday season.
Amy also starts to blur the lines between her professional and personal lives when she takes her investigation beyond what she’s supposed to do. During a video chat, Bilel confided in Melody about how one of his favorite childhood memories was going to a London sweetshop owned by a fellow Syrian. Bilel tells her that it’s one of his few happy memories of London.
One day, Amy (disguised as Melody) surprises Bilel by doing their next Skype chat from that same London sweetshop. She gives a video tour of the shop so that it can bring back some happy memories for him. Although this might seem like a shrewd gesture to further endear herself to Bilel, it’s actually a very risky thing to do because no one should be seeing Amy out in public in her undercover disguise. What if someone who knew Amy walked into that shop and recognized her? (Stranger things have happened.) Her cover would be blown.
It’s during this video chat that something major happens in the story that reveals that Amy hasn’t been able to keep an emotional distance from Bilel during this investigation. The result of this video chat also brings up journalistic ethical dilemmas that can happen when journalists work undercover and encounter things that they did not expect. Amy does indeed go down a proverbial “rabbit hole” in her obsession to get a bigger story, but what will it cost her?
The believable performances of Kane and Latif make “Profile” a watchable film overall. Where the movie falters a bit is during the middle part of the story, which drags a little with some cutesy courtship footage, such as Bilel and Melody cooking curry during one of their Skype chats. And there are many instances during their Skype chats when someone in Amy’s real life interrupts and she has to abruptly disconnect from her call with Bilel. Bilel doesn’t get suspicious though (even though he should) because Amy (as Melody) always comes up with an excuse that he automatically believes.
In “Profile,” the terror of living in war-torn Syria is often a backdrop and not at the forefront—and deliberately so, because Bilel wants to paint a rosy picture of Syria, in order to lure Melody there. A bomb might go off while Bilel is outside, but if it does, he will quickly disconnect from the call. Likewise, he doesn’t show Melody any part of his murderous acts and other violence that he commits as a terrorist.
It’s an example of how people who create fake personas online only show what they want to show. If viewers are willing to tolerate seeing a movie about catching a terrorist that involves a lot of footage of computer screens, then “Profile” should hold people’s interest with this intriguing story. Beyond what’s on the computer screens, the movie skillfully offers a metaphorical blank canvas where viewers can project their opinions on how they feel about investigative journalism, online relationshps and tactics used to fight terrorism.
Focus Features released “Profile” in U.S. cinemas on May 14, 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, the documentary “Notturno” features an all-Arabic group of people who have been affected by war and ISIS in their areas.
Culture Clash: The documentary, which was filmed over three years, includes survivor stories about the traumatic effects of war.
Culture Audience: “Notturno” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in very atmospheric, cinéma vérité-styled documentaries about war-torn Middle Eastern culture.
Ali Ali in “Notturno” (Photo courtesy of Super LTD)
For a documentary that’s set in war-torn areas of the Middle East, “Notturno” (directed by Gianfranco Rosi) is a film that’s a lot quieter than people might think it is. That’s because the movie does not feature any “battle scenes,” and there are many scenes in the movie where groups of people are gathered but they don’t talk very much. “Notturno” means “night” in Italian, and much of the movie takes place at night.
Filmed over three years on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, this documentary succeeds in its aim to have a “fly on the wall” perspective, with no “expert” commentary, no voiceovers, no re-enactments and no amination. “Notturno” is essentially a “slice of life” film that shows what life is like in these war-torn regions for a variety of people, most of whom are not identified by name until the end credits.
The movie begins on a tragic note, with a procession of grieving, middle-aged and elderly women going through an abandoned building that is later revealed to be a place where their military sons and husbands were tortured and killed. They are crying and praying as they mourn for their loved ones. The woman who is the most distressed wails, “I can feel your presence in this room … My son, why didn’t they take my life instead of yours?”
Later, she looks at a photo of her son’s murdered body. The rope that he was strangled with is still around his neck. She says that she’s in the room where he died. And then, as if she comes a grim acceptance, she says out loud, as if speaking to the spirit of her dead son: “I can’t feel your presence anymore.”
The movie also follows a poacher named Murtadah Jabbar Bedar in various scenes. He is shown in quiet solitude as he makes a journey to marshy areas with a gun to look for game that he can hunt. A teenager named Ali Ali is also prominently featured in the documentary, as he tries to get odd jobs and look for bread to help feed his family. One of the temporary jobs he’s able to get is helping a man as an armed guard for the man’s field of crops.
Women who are Peshmerga guerrillas are shown gathered, mostly in silence, as they get ready for surveillance and when they got back to their station to sleep for the night. These women have an obvious camaraderie, but their quietness is in stark contrast to the steady chatter that would be happening if they were Western soldiers. The flip side to the precarious duties of these female soldiers is shown in another scene, where a distressed mother checks a message on her cell phone and finds out that her daughter has been captured in Syria and has secretly made this phone call while in captivity. The mother begins to cry, and her helplessness is heartbreaking to watch.
Even though there are signs of domestic tranquility, the threats of war soldiers and ISIS terrorists are always looming. In one of the movie’s early scenes, a couple of young married parents are out on a date in an outdoor rooftop area while the sound of military gunfire can be heard in background. The couple tries to make pleasant small talk with each other while she smokes a hookah.
The man says that it looks like it’s going to rain. His wife answers, “Is there anything more beautiful than rain?” After their meal, they go inside and tuck their children into bed. And then he changes off into a white outfit, goes out side with a drum, and walks through the streets while he sings religious hymns.
“Notturno” also takes viewers inside a psychiatric facility, where a small group of patients (five men and one woman) are participating in a play and are given the script by the play director. The actors/patients in this play are named Walid Hamdon, Farid Philip, Kifah Nuri, Ahmed Mohammed, Abbas Mustafa and Mayade Mhammod. The director tells them that the play is about their homeland and “the tyranny, the wars, the invasion, the occupation and the extremists.” The actors/patients are seen rehearsing their lines in their rooms, and it soon becomes clear to them that they are going to be in a play that advocates for freedom from these social ills.
“Notturno” makes its biggest impact by showing how the traumas of war and terrorism have affected children. In multiple scenes in the movie, children have made drawings of some of the horrors that they witnessed. The show the illustrations to a woman who looks like a schoolteacher who also does therapy counseling. Two sisters—Lamya Saydo (who looks about 9 or 10 years old) and Mina Syado (who looks about 6 or 7 years old)—describe their drawings and talk about themselves and other people being beaten and tortured by ISIS soldiers.
A boy named Fawaz Murad, who looks like he’s about 11 or 12 years old, discusses his illustrations and goes into harrowing details about the torture he endured and the murders he witnessed. He describes seeing people being beheaded. And he also says that ISIS soldiers ordered their captives to become cannibals. He stutters as he tells these stories and his eyes look forever haunted.
“Notturno” is not the type of movie that has mass appeal because of the often-disturbing subject matter and because it’s not a typical war documentary. The long stretches of silence in the movie are meant to show that fear and oppression have gripped these regions so much, that many of the people refrain from talking freely and out loud. “Notturno” director Rosi, who is also the movie’s director of photography, has a lot of visually stunning cinematography (especially outdoors) in the documentary, which shows great appreciation for the natural landscapes of the regions. However, the greater appreciation that “Notturno” conveys is for the resilience of the people in these war-torn areas.
Super LTD released “Notturno” in select U.S. cinemas on January 22, 2021. The movie was released on VOD and Hulu on January 29, 2021.
