In order to avoid a forced marriage, 19-year-old Hala finds shelter across the Euphrates, at the Kurdish Female Military. While learning how to fight, she gets inspired by the promise of freeing more women. When the Kurdish military liberates her hometown from ISIS, she returns there as a policewoman authorised to protect other vulnerable women. Hala finds herself ready to fulfil her greatest dream: to free her younger sisters from her father's hand. Τhe threat of a marriage and the brutal stories of female oppression lead women to the other side of the river. They are trained in a strict military style, taught that men are the enemy. But is there freedom to be found between holding a gun against the patriarchic society or be deprived of the possibility to love?
VFF Documentary Film Production Award — 36 DOK.fest Munich Millenium 18 Docs Against Gravity CPH:DOX — F:ACT AWARD Competition Best Film - FünfSeenFilmfestival Best Camera - Achtung Berlin FF Selection European Film Award Hessischer Filmprize 38 Kassel DOKFEST
About the filmmaker
Antonia is a director, cinematographer and producer. She studied Visual Communication as well as Art and Media at the Berlin University of Arts and Cinematography in Film University in Potsdam Babelsberg and at the ISA in Havana, Cuba. In this time she worked as DoP for several films, both fiction and documentary that run on numerous festivals and created video installations and directed documentary shorts. Her directorial debut “The other side of the river” she shot for more then one year in North East Syria. Since 2018 she is based between Kassel and Berlin and runs her own production company Pink Shadow Films.