Sky takes on Shamima Begum ISIS doc

The Return: Life After ISIS features Shamima Begum

European pay TV operator Sky has boarded a feature documentary about women who fled to Syria to join ISIS in their youth, ahead of the film’s premiere at the forthcoming SXSW Film Festival.

The Return: Life After ISIS is from filmmaker Alba Sotorra Clua and has been picked up for the Sky Documentaries channel in the UK.

The feature doc provides exclusive access to a group of Western women who devoted their young lives to ISIS, including British recruit Shamima Begum, who fled the country with two school friends when she was just 15, and Hoda Muthana from the US, who incited her Twitter followers to commit drive-by shootings and kill Americans.

Splitting opinions in the media and the public, these women now tell their stories for the first time. The film explores the realities of the more than 60,000 ISIS brides and children stranded in Syria with no country to go back to. The doc will launch on Sky Documentaries and Sky OTT platform Now TV in the summer.

Zai Bennett, MD of content for Sky in the UK, Poppy Dixon, director of documentaries and factual, and Jack Oliver, head of coproductions, sealed the deal for the doc. MetFilm Sales is handling worldwide sales of the title.

Sotorra Clua’s previous projects include documentary feature film Game Over (2015) and Comandante Arian (2018).

The Return: Life After ISIS is an Alba Sotorra Production in association with MetFilm (The Reason I Jump, Misha and the Wolves) and Ronachan Films (Escape from ISIS, The UN Sex Abuse Scandal).