Escape from Isis

Winner of International Emmy 2016 for Best Current Affairs / Winner of Royal Television Society Award 2016 for Best International Current Affairs Film/ Winner of Amnesty International’s 2015 Award for Best Human Rights Documentary/ Winner of Broadcast Award 2016 for Best News & Current Affairs Programme/ Nominated for a Bafta Award 2016 for Best Current Affairs Film/ Winner of the London Foreign Press Association’s 2015 Award for TV Feature Story of the Year/ Winner of the Oversease Press Club of America’s 2016 Award for Best International Reporting (Broadcast)/ Winner of the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Center’s 2016 Award for International Television/ Winner of the2016 Realscreen Award for Best Current Affairs/ Nominated for a 2016 Edinburgh TV Award for Best International Co-production/ Nominated for 2016 One World Media Award for Best Television Documentary/ Shortlisted for a 2016 Grierson Award for Best Current Affairs Film

 

“A breathtakingly bold piece of Journalism” Guardian

“This…may not be easy to watch, but the stories it tells are urgent and important” Gabriel Tate, The Sunday Telegraph

“Courageous documentary” David Chater, The Times

“Powerful testimony from women trapped inside the terror state” Daily Express

 

 

Featuring exclusive covert footage, shot by an activist cell inside the so called Islamic State, this film exposes the brutal regime suffered by millions of women living under ISIS – and the extraordinary story of a secret underground network trying to save them.

Powerful testimony from women trapped inside the terror state and those who managed to escape reveal the medieval barbarity many are forced to endure. Including lashings, stonings and sexual slavery.

Under ISIS women also enforce the brutal rules too. The film includes an exclusive interview with a member of their feared female morality police, the Al-Khansaa Brigade, who describes personally administering corporal punishment on women for wearing the wrong clothes.

Yet, amid the horror, a small group of brave volunteers have organised an underground railroad inside Islamic State territory to free the extremists’ captives – primarily women and children from the minority Yazidi group who suffer the worst abuses. This secret network have never allowed cameras to film their work before.

For the first time, the film shows the rescue network secretly plotting rescues from inside the Islamic State, negotiating with ISIS fighters to free their sex slaves, and literally carrying groups of freed women and children out over the frontline.

C4/WGBH (2015)

 

Director: Edward Watts
Editor: Bradley Manning
Executive Producers: Sam Collyns (Ronachan Films) and George Waldrum (ITN)
Producer: Evan Williams
Development Producers: Rosie Garthwaite and Frederic Roland
Narrator: Samantha Morton

For WGBH Frontline:
Editor: Todd Dowling
Producer: James Jones

 

A Co-production with ITN, Evan Williams Productions & Mediadante