The director Mareike Engelhardt became her psychodrama through true events.Rabia – The Lost DreamInspired: In 2015, Fatiha Mejjati, widow of Karim Mejati, the co-founder of a Moroccan-Islamic fighting force and member of Al-Qaeda, ran several women's shelters (Madafas) in Raqqa, Syria, under the name Oum Adam. Widows and unmarried women from all over the world were imprisoned there in poor living conditions. Their only way out was to marry an IS fighter. The “black widow of jihad” caused fear and terror with an iron fist.
A news magazine once even called Oum Adam “the incarnation of female hatred.” “Rabia” does not claim to be politically enlightening, but rather asks the question of what must have happened for a young woman to become a heartless monster. Engelhardt concentrates on Madame's perfidious methods to make women submissive. The real Fatiha Mejjati served as a model for the cruel mistress from whom the fictional protagonists of the film have to suffer.
At the center of “Rabia” are 19-year-old Jessica (Megan Northam) and her friend Laila (Natacha Krief). The two work as nurses, but their job doesn't fulfill them. When Laila is invited by a Syrian to “a new life” in Raqqa, they leave Paris together. With the man's photo in their luggage, the two women get on the plane. High above the clouds they dream of paradise. However, they will never see the man, instead they end up in a madafa. Your cell phones and anything western must be handed in at the women's shelter. In a questionnaire they have to state, among other things, how many children they want to have. From now on they are prisoners.
With great curiosity, Jessica and Laila embark on their chosen adventure, whispering to other women as if on a school trip about the handsome man whom Laila will probably soon marry. Then the women whose future husbands lost their lives while fighting for the Islamic State are called out. Laila is there. The women are congratulated. Laila cries. She clings to her dream and marries the next best thing. Jessica, unnamed shortly after her arrival in “Rabia”, remains alone in Madame's women's shelter…
How a teenager becomes a torture mistress
Camerawoman Agnès Godard, who shot “The Sky Over Berlin” with Wim Wenders, makes good use of the little light in the women's shelter. She uses the scenes with Madame (Lubna Azabal) to portray the mistress of the house as an ambivalent person with light and shadow. She can read people, destroy them and decide their fate. Also about Rabias. From now on, Rabia goes through all the stages of a women's shelter until she becomes the madame's cruel right hand. When she meets Laila again, Jessica is a different person. Over the course of the film, Megan Northam transforms Rabia's resistant gaze into powerful hatred. When Rabia is finally faced with the ruins of her life, Godard also draws a visual parallel between Rabia and Madame.
Director Mareike Engelhardt gives insights into a Syrian Madafa for the first time. With the help of Céline Martelet and Edith Bouvier, two French experts on jihadism, she came into contact with young women who lived in the madafas of Oum Adam. Engelhardt also organized supervised meetings with contemporary witnesses for Megan Northam and Natacha Krief. On set, Engelhardt and her team were also advised by a former member. The woman described situations like those in the script from her perspective. She also smoked a cigarette here and there.
Since neither pictures nor videos of a real women's shelter exist, Engelhardt, together with set decorator Dan Bevan, was able to create a location that follows the dramaturgy. The film was shot in the former France Tabac factory in Sarlat-Périgord Noir, France, which in the first scenes looks like a refugee shelter. All the women there sleep like a Spartan on mattresses. As the story progresses, you will get to know other facets of the house.
Madame's rooms are comfortable with flowing fabrics and inviting decor, but brutal punishments are carried out in the basement, away from the gaze of others in dungeons. The film spreads fear with great arbitrariness and initiates brutal measures of repentance. Some scenes are almost unbearable, a lot of it takes place in your head. Instead of violence, you mainly see its traces.
Conclusion: “Rabia” is a complex female character that you rarely see in the cinema: in her, vulnerability and disappointment turn into hate and only then unfold her full strength. “Rabia” is as disturbing as it is frightening.
We saw “Rabia” as part of the 58th Hof Film Festival.
