First shown at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH: DOX, “Children of the Enemy” follows Patricio Galvez, a 50-year-old Swedish-Chilean searching for his family in the middle of ISIS territory. His daughter Amanda’s story is notorious in Sweden: converted to radical Islam, married to a jihadist, she flew with their 4 children to fight in Syria.
In 2019, when Patricio learns that Amanda and her husband have both been killed during the bombing of Erbil, he sets off to find his 7 grandchildren, aged 1 to 8, last heard of in a Kurdish prison camp in northeastern Syria. Gorky Glaser-Muller, the director, also Swedish-Chilean, flies to Iraq with his friend, sharing the difficulties Galvez faces as he tries to reunite his family.
Arab News says: “The result is a lonely but stubborn struggle. Especially with the authorities, the media and the politicians who refuse to touch the red-hot subject of Syrian fighters and their children. During a 45-day trip through Iraq to Syria, we are presented with the story of what happened to his daughter Amanda as we follow him closely in his desperate struggle to save his seven grandchildren before it’s too late.”
Beyond the story itself, the film touches on a highly-sensitive political and human subject. There are still several thousand children in these camps, while many European countries are refusing to repatriate children of ISIS fighters, “their status, like that of thousands of others, falling into an international diplomatic limbo.”
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Sources : arabnews.fr, film-documentaire.fr, variety.com, variety.com
