Two teenage girls in search of freedom, friendship, and belonging run away from their troubled lives with a misguided plan of traveling to Syria.

In a nuanced first feature, acclaimed theater director and playwright Nadia Fall explores the irreducible challenges of teenage girlhood through a boldly specific sociopolitical lens. Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar masterfully embody Doe and Muna: girls on the cusp of adulthood looking to escape the pervasive minoritization and othering in their native U.K. by any means necessary. Through Suhayla El-Bushra’s precise, compassionate writing, the girls embark on a transformative journey entangled with diverse provocations that complicate their conceptions of identity, faith, and positionality at every scale.

Though the setting and journey hold tension and gravity, a core, universal tenderness surfaces. Brides is a gutsy, loving, and pensive coming-of-age tale — a depiction of the loyalty of friendship, teenage autonomy, and the illusion of invulnerable youth.—Cameron Asharian