From left to right :Safiyya, Ebada and Nadia.
British theatre powerhouse Nadia Fall, Artistic Director of the Young Vic, makes her feature film debut with Bride — a bold and empathetic exploration of friendship, identity, and the pressures facing young Muslim women in the UK. At the heart of the story are two teenage girls, played by Safiyya Ingar, a stage and screen actor known for her breakout in Layla (Sundance), and Ebada Hassan, a newcomer discovered through an open social media casting call.
In this candid conversation, Fall, Ingar, and Hassan open up about the six-year journey to bring the film to life, why telling the story from the young women’s perspective was essential, and how lived experience shaped their work.
In conversation with Susanda Wolf (palmanda.com)
Susanda How did the journey of making Brides get started?
Nadia Fall: I met the writer, Suhayla El-Bushra, at the National Theatre. I run a theatre in London called the Young Vic, and we met at the National Theatre doing a play. We really got on, and actually loads of film people saw the play and said, “You two should do screen.” We had the seed of this idea, actually. But they said, “You’d better do a short together, because you’ve never made a film before.”
At that time, in the media, there was the story of the real-life young women who made this really fateful journey to Syria. From that, we noticed how the media, the British press, really vilified these young women as monsters, as evil, as terrorists, and all of that.
We thought, “God, we’ve got to tell the story from the young women’s point of view.” That’s what the seed of our collaboration was. Suhayla wrote the script, and we worked on the script through lockdown. It took many, many years. It’s also a debut feature for Suhayla.
Susanda: And Safiyya, you looked so familiar to me in the film. What was your experience in film acting before Brides?
Safiyya Ingar: This is my first lead in a feature. I’ve been an actor for nearly 10 years now. I started eight years ago, and I mainly did theatre. I went to drama school, did that training, and I did theatre for the first six years of my career. I’ve done a lot of regional work. One of my first plays was with a company called Paint Plough, and I did a show in Edinburgh as well.
I did a TV show and a film called Layla, which was at Sundance last year, my first proper feature. Brides was my first lead in a feature, which was incredible. So I’ve been doing this for a hot minute. It’s been nice, actually, to have it come around like this and feel like, “OK, I’ve got this now.” Because you do it for a while and you’re like, “Can I do this anymore?” And then I did it, and I was like, “OK, cool. I am part of this. I can do this.”
Susanda: So, Ebada, was this your complete first acting job?
Ebada Hassan: Yeah, complete first acting job. Actually the complete opposite [of Safiyya]. I didn’t go to drama school or anything. I got it through an open casting call on social media. I didn’t even have an agent or anything at the time. A bunch of friends sent it to me and said, “You like acting. Just give it a shot.”
Interviewer: Really? Wow. A story in itself.
Ebada Hassan: Yeah, it was a casting call for someone of my background. I knew it was for the lead in a feature, but the casting call didn’t give much away.
Nadia Fall: We kept it vague. We gave a little bit, because we knew we wanted to cast people from a genuine heritage background of the characters, and also from the Muslim diaspora. Shaheen Baig was our casting director — she’s incredible, prolific, and known for street casting of working-class actors and global majority talent.
This social media callout brought us 700-plus applicants. I saw hundreds, maybe 400-plus young women. A lot of self-tapes, a lot of one-on-one auditions, but also workshop auditions. I think Ebada is hiding her light under a bushel, because she didn’t even do drama at school — no A-level, GCSE drama, or anything like that. From 700 applicants, to be the lead… that’s incredible. We took a chance on her, and it paid off.
And I think it was sort of perfect, because the chemistry you see between these two is real. You can’t buy that kind of electricity.
Susanda: Yes. The acting was flawless all round.
Safiyya Ingar: I think, because if you don’t mind me saying, I’d done a little bit before. It was my first time doing a lead in a feature, but I knew what I was doing to a degree. For Ebada, it was her first time on a feature film set. It can be incredibly overwhelming. The fact that I knew a little bit about the lay of the land really helped anchor Ebada, (Safirra turns to Ebada) and meant you had someone you could ask questions to.
Ebada Hassan: Yeah, definitely. It was brilliant because it was both our first time in different ways, so that eased the pressure a bit.
Safiyya Ingar: I wasn’t like super-experienced that you had to lean on me every day, but I did have some support to offer.
Ebada Hassan: And I had support on both sides, which was reassuring. Also just having a giggle on set every day — having fun.
Nadia Fall: We were really, really lucky, because for this particular story, which is through young women’s eyes, most of our team were women. All the HODs — the cinematographer, the producers, even our editor. It’s quite unusual to have such a female-led team. I think it meant a lot for this story, because we had to do some really exposing things.
We shot in three different countries, which is no mean feat on a small budget indie. Every time we found our stride, it was time to go to the next place, a new bunch of people, different language, different culture. We had to be on our toes. Being there at 3:00 AM in the morning, ready to shoot in a new country, could have really made lesser people come unstuck. But it was a testament to our team that we still love each other, talk to each other, and like to hang out.
Susanda: That’s fantastic. You’ve got a UK distributor for it?
Nadia Fall: Yes. It’s a new project for Vue Lumière. We’ve got 400–500 cinemas in the UK with Bankside, and Nikki Bentham is our lead producer. We’re passionate that people see it in the cinema, because films are really made to be seen on the big screen.
There’s something about coming together in the dark, sitting down… it’s our kind of modern church. It’s like the congregation.
That’s really important. I think there’s a loneliness epidemic out there. People are isolated at home. To make the effort to go to the cinema is a communal thing. I really want that — for people to watch it with others.
Susanda: Yes. It would also be good to screen it in schools. It covered racism, bullying, poverty — Even fleshing out the bully in just a couple of scenes and giving them a reason why they became a bully.
Nadia Fall: Yes. I love that bully character, because I hope even in the short amount of time you’ve got to tell a story, you realise the bully also has his own pain. Nobody is just innately evil. We’re pitted against each other — “That person’s different to you, different colour, different religion” — when we all bleed the same.
I know it sounds corny, but it’s important that we evoke empathy for each other. That way, connection comes, and everything else dissipates when we start talking.
What’s frightening is that the social media and the politicians in the film — they’re back. The EDL marches are back, Farage is back. It’s frightening because we thought we were making a kind of history piece set in 2014. But 10, 11 years on, it feels like we really haven’t moved on. It’s cyclical — some sinister elements in society raising their ugly head again, stoking hate and friction.
Safiyya Ingar: And it’s affecting our children. Especially now. When I was growing up, social media was just coming in. Now it’s everywhere. Every child has a phone whether you like it or not. Kids have unfiltered access to all parts of the internet, and it’s about what they’re exposed to.
I don’t find it ironic that people can watch shows like Adolescence and immediately understand radicalization, indoctrination, incel culture, and how it runs rampant in young men. But is that same grace given when the colour of the child changes, or when what they’re speaking about is different?
What violence do these girls actually enact? None. I’ve even seen people criticising my character and how she behaves. They find her annoying. But actually I feel she’s just a brazen little kid with a strong head on her shoulders. She’s not out there killing anyone.
People will watch a show like Adolescents, where the character actually kills a young girl, and immediately their hearts go out to him. Everyone wants to have that conversation. It’s not that one is more important than the other, but the grace isn’t the same. The breadth of conversation, the depth, is never the same. We want to open that.
We want to fracture that, and say: let’s give every single conversation about our children the same space. Because all of our children are important. We need to protect them. That starts with adults questioning what we’ve been taught — how we’ve been told some children mean more than others.
Right now in the media, we see how some children are ignored or demonized. We see their bodies wilting away and it still won’t push people in power to do something, because our bodies don’t matter. They never have.
Nadia Fall: Exactly. Teenagers make impulsive, risky decisions. It’s how their brains are wired. Usually there’s a safety net: parents, school, community. But what happens if that net isn’t there? That’s what we wanted to show.
Safiyya Ingar: What’s interesting is that many audiences don’t know the real story. Some don’t know who Shamima Begum is. And we tell them: look her up.
In the UK, people only know what happened after Shamima went, the headlines, the citizenship case. No one has seen the before. Many people don’t even know she was 15 when she left, because the media adulterated her.
Nadia Fall: Exactly. And Shamima isn’t the only one. Our film is fictionalised, but the graffiti on the wall, the social media, some of the instances are taken from real lives. Young men went, young women went. From Australia, Germany, Britain. Hundreds.
There are no official figures, maybe for security reasons, or because we don’t really know. It wasn’t just one story. Shamima is the name that comes up in the press, but there were many others. Some had their identities changed, some are back in Europe living quiet lives. But Shamima is stateless.
She was born in London, never even been to Bangladesh. Couldn’t be more of a Londoner. Yet her citizenship was stripped. It exposes the double standard of who gets judged as British. If you’ve done something bad, shouldn’t you still be afforded a judge and jury? That’s the principle. But depending on the colour of your skin, the standard shifts.
Susanda What was it like shooting in those situations? It could have been dark, but the film had a lot of lightness.
Nadia Fall: Yes. Sometimes you see films that are doom and gloom all the way through. Too much. But young people always have lightness, humour, dreams. Even in tragedy, they joke. That’s what I love about these girls: charismatic, funny, charming. I’d love to see what these girls could have done with their lives if things had worked out differently.
Interviewer: What is next for you, Nadia?
Nadia Fall: I hope I get to do it again. With filmmaking, at the end of every day, every week, certainly at the end of editing, you wish you could go back in a time machine and do it again. You learn so much. My big hope is that someone lets me do it again.
We’re already cooking up another project with the same team. And my day job is running the Young Vic. I’m in rehearsals now for my first play there, Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Theatre is my first love. But I’d love to make another film.
Susanda: And for each of you, what scene resonates the most personally?
Ebada Hassan: For me, the scene where Muna jumps in to defend Doa when her hijab gets ripped off, and then she’s punished at school. That’s a clear example, and I know so many Black and Brown kids who’ve gone through the same. Our idea of justice isn’t translated the same way institutionally.
Safiyya Ingar: For me, it’s the bedroom scene, where the girls make a pact. It’s like, “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together. We only have each other.” Even at home, where life isn’t great, they have that bond. That was a really beautiful moment, showing they only had each other.
Susanda: If you had to come up with a few words to describe the film to someone who’s never seen the trailer?
Nadia Fall: It’s a road movie. Vibrating — full of teenage hormones, love, adrenaline. Colourful — because of the different landscapes. Disarming — because the girls themselves are disarming.
I’m a cheesy person, I like the romance in it: her love with her mum, with her friend, even that blue-eyed boy. The pull of first love. We all remember it.