Nadia Falls on Brides: “It’s about those ride-or-die best friends that you have as a teenager”

Playwright and theatre director Nadia Fall’s auspicious career has led her from some of the most revered venues in Britain to become artistic director at the Young Vic. At the National, her productions included The Doctor’s Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw and two with Michaela Coel: Fall’s own play Home (2013) and Coel’s Chewing Gum Dreams (2014). A stint at Theatre Royal Stratford East saw her direct Lenny Henry in August Wilson’s King Hedley II (2019) before she won an Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in opera for Benjamin Britten’s one-act opera, Noye’s Fludde (2019). 

Demonstrating her keen eye for a story, her debut screen feature Brides is an urgent drama about two teenage girls who leave their troubled lives in Britain for a fresh start. Two Muslim friends, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar), are lured to Syria by social media posts promising a freedom they don’t have at home. Although the film is non-specific about the exact purpose of the girls’ journey, the story has parallels with that of Shamima Begum, the British-born woman who entered Syria to join Islamic State at the age of 15 in 2015.

Brides takes a refreshingly nonjudgmental view of its teen pair as they travel to Istanbul and make their way through Turkey towards the Syrian border. En route, they befriend a bus station clerk who lets them stay in her family home when they lose their money and a father with two young daughters who drives them out of the city.

The film was shot in five weeks in Wales, Turkey and Sicily from October 2023, while Fall spent 2024 editing and finishing the film, which is supported by the BFI. A few days before Brides’ world premiere at Sundance Film Festival, Fall sat down to explain how she directs, real-life inspiration for the film and the influence of Thelma & Louise (1991).

When did you first collaborate with writer Suhayla El-Bushra and how did Brides develop? 

Nadia Fall: We met doing a comedy called The Suicide at the National Theatre almost 10 years ago. Lots of people were interested in us as a duo and started to approach us to make a film. 

We roped in Nicky Bentham, our lead producer, and as a trio we had this idea quite early on; both Suhayla and I had a background in working with young people. Then, real-life incidents of young women running away, all around Europe, were on the news, but specifically the Shamima Begum case: the east London teenagers that ran away from home, didn’t go to school, and found their way to Syria.

We thought “Do we want to tell this hot potato with a story about our community or do we not?” But in the end, we realised we had to be the ones to tell it, because it was ours to tell and we were going to do it properly, from the point of view of the young people that made these decisions.

Had you met people in real life who had similar experiences to those depicted in the film? 

I’d worked in a lot of east London schools, including the school that that group of young women came from. Suhayla did loads of research about real-life people. We could have made a brilliant documentary, but we wanted to make it a fictionalised road movie. Really our film is about female friendship, it’s about those ride-or-die best friends that you have as a teenager. I run the Young Vic Theatre now, but for the last seven years ran the Theatre Royal Stratford East in the East End. One colleague there actually went to school with the girls.

You grew up in Southwark and Lambeth and have South Asian heritage…

Yeah, my parents are Indian. Suhayla and I joke that we are like the old versions of the two protagonists. I’m Muna, which is my sister’s name, funnily enough. And she’s Doe in a way, in a different time and place. There’s certainly personality traits Suhayla and I share with these two characters. 

I’m very much a Londoner, born in south London, lived in the Middle East [Kuwait City] a bit and then came back for secondary school. We’re both definitely international but feel a part of London at the same time, which, I think, is the definition of Londoners, because we’re all a big melting pot here of different heritage and different cultures. That’s what London is.

What kind of direction did you give Safiyya and Ebada? They give accomplished performances for such young actors.

I felt they rose to the occasion. I’m a director because I love actors, I love spending time with them, they’re the most charismatic people on the planet. I can’t tell any stories, whether on screen or on stage without them. They are the paint to the painting.

I love speaking to them. I hear from colleagues, “We don’t talk that much to the actors. We’ve got something in mind, we cast it as well as we can, and then we just let them do it.” I don’t want to do it that way ever, because I like spending time with actors and syphoning out a performance from them.

I’ve worked with the greats on stage, but also first-timers that are now household names. But when you’re working with rural talent that might not have done it before, it’s a real privilege. Ebada had never acted before, not even in drama club at school. Because it was my first time directing and her first time acting, it was really precious to me that through a small Breaking Through The Lens grant, we were able to do some rehearsal. Not a lot, but enough to get to know each other, trust each other. It’s nuts the thought of two people playing soulmates and then meeting each other for the first time on day one of the shoot.

Saf and Ebada got to forge a real friendship and chemistry beforehand. I work a lot through improvisation, so we were able to do that. Saf is also at the beginning of her journey as an actor. She’s done a bit more: she’s done theatre, she’s done a film. That little bit more experience allowed her to really support Ebada – never in a patronising way, always in a loving and protective way. Because it can be really chaotic on set. There’s a lot of people, a lot of noise, a lot of weather. I really appreciated that they were there for each other and we were there. We were as thick as thieves.

What attracts young women to embark on this sort of journey and go to Syria?

There’s always a different reason for different people. I hope our film shows the nuance of it, that there’s a lot of push and there’s a lot of pull. We explore social media, we explore feeling that you don’t belong in school or in society or at home when things are tough. But also, sometimes when you’re 15 or 16, it doesn’t take much for you to do the most risky thing. Our brain is hardwired as a teenager to do things of high risk without thinking of the repercussions. That’s just how it works when you’re a teenager. And for all the reasons we can scratch our chins about, sometimes it’s just a boy. Sometimes it’s just because.

What were your cinematic influences on the film?

Thelma & Louise. A classic, beautiful film about best friends, but also about emancipation and misogyny. Sometimes as an artist you get disheartened: how can I do those big vistas they do? Also, Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020). It floors me every time. It’s the art of economy, not saying or showing too much. I was taken on this journey right into the souls of these two young women. It’s partly set in New York, but I don’t remember seeing any of the city; I just remember them. That was a real lesson in economy, in realising it’s about the story and the people. With this particular story, especially, we wanted to tell it from the girls’ point of view. All we really needed was the girls.

Brides, backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.