Taglines: La femme, la vie, la bilerte.
Somewhere in Kurdistan, not too long ago, Bahar (Farahani), a young lawyer, visits her family. In a bloody attack led by extremists, her husband is killed and she’s taken prisoner with her son and thousands of other women and children. A few months after her escape, she’s now the commander of the “Girls of the Sun”, a female battalion.
The objective: to take back the town where she was captured and bring back her hostage son. By her side, Mathilde (Bercot), a veteran war reporter, follows the daily life of the “Girls of the Sun” during the 3 days of the offensive. Bahar shares with Mathilde the succession of events that brought these women here together, united by their quest for hope and justice. Out of this unimaginable situation, a universal sisterhood is born: the bond between the “Girls of the Sun”.
Girls of the Sun (French: Les Filles du Soleil) is a 2018 French drama film directed by Eva Husson and starring Golshifteh Farahani, Emmanuelle Bercot, Erol Afşin, Arabi Ghibeh, Behi Djanati Atai, Zübeyde Bulut, Maia Shamoevi, Evin Ahmad, Nuka Asatiani, Maia Shamoevi, Roza Mirzoiani. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 25%, based on 8 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. Agnès Poirier noted that the film initially received “high praise at Cannes” but later “an overwhelming majority of we critics found the film appalling: dreadfully written, poorly directed, verging on obscenity for treating tragedy with Valkyrie-like music and aestheticised images”.
Film Review for Les Filles du Soleil
“Women, Life, Freedom”. This is the chorus sung on the eve of battle by women holding guns and wearing fatigues – the women on which this second full-length film by French filmmaker Eva Husson focuses. Thrust into competition at the 71st Cannes Film Festival with her film, Girls of the Sun, the chorus perfectly summarises the laudable intentions with which this director has approached the moving and military subject of her second full-length film, following on from the well-received Bang Gang – A Modern Love Story.
But the simplifications which Husson has been forced to enact in rendering the complex mosaic of the war-torn Sinjar region (in north-western Iraq and close to the Syrian border) as played out between August 2014 and Autumn 2015, leave much to be desired and the very American cinematic style that has been adopted in the making of this film in spite of the crew’s distinct lack of means, gives mixed results. This in no way detracts from the significance of the film’s message, denouncing the violence used against women and flying the flag for the strength they demonstrate in moving beyond their suffering to face up to their oppressors.
Initially following in the footsteps of Mathilde (Emmanuelle Bercot), a much-experienced French war reporter, wounded in the flesh (she lost an eye in Homs) but also weakened in spirit by her family situation (we will later learn that her husband, also a journalist, was killed in Libya three months earlier and that ever since their child suffers from anxiety attacks), we arrive very quickly (by helicopter, over lavish mountain landscapes) at the scene of the action. Kurdish forces await international coalition air support to take back a town from Daesh.
Mathilde is, at this time, embedded in a very particular battalion commanded by Bahar (Golshifteh Farahani) who is, in reality, the central character in this tale. These soldiers are, in fact, former captives of the men in black who, in the surrounding villages on 3 August 2014, rounded up in excess of 7,000 women and children.
Women like Bahar whose husband died before her eyes, whose young son was taken from her, and who was herself sold, before being sold again, passing from one rapist-torturer to another, before finally managing to escape with outside help. All of these events are revisited via flashbacks while, in the present day, an attack is being prepared, and then it finally happens, propelling Bahar, her small group and Mathilde as a witness, into the path of flying bullets, the mire of unexploded mines, the rain of bombshells, and the claws of death…
Having opted for the heroization of her lead character, Eva Husson drives the plot forward effectively, with the trips back into Bahar’s past turning out to be the real strength of the film, which has also revealed Golshifteh Farahani to be a fine actress. However, the flatness of the supporting characters and the storytelling shortcuts have a detrimental effect on the rest of the film.
The action sequences, meanwhile – shrewdly on the minimalist side – fail to reach the usual intensity levels of American war films or of documentaries which have previously focused on the capturing of towns by Kurds. Flaws which the film only manages to overcome in certain moments (or which it tries to do with the help of its omnipresent music), but these flaws happily fall short of entirely discrediting the film on account of the poignant reality which is its inspiration.
Girls of the Sun is produced by Maneki Films and co-produced by French groups Wild Bunch and Arches Films, Belgian Gapbusters, Georgian 20 Steps Productions [+] and Swiss company Bord Cadre films, with international sales managed by Elle Driver.
Les Filles du Soleil (2019)
Directed by: Eva Husson
Starring: Golshifteh Farahani, Emmanuelle Bercot, Erol Afşin, Arabi Ghibeh, Behi Djanati Atai, Zübeyde Bulut, Maia Shamoevi, Evin Ahmad, Nuka Asatiani, Maia Shamoevi, Roza Mirzoiani
Screenplay by: Eva Husson
Cinematography by: Mattias Troelstrup
Film Editing by: Emilie Orsini
Costume Design by: Marine Galliano, Simon Matchabeli
Art Direction by: David Bersanetti
Music by: Morgan Kibby
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Release Date: May 3, 2019
Visits: 51
