Layla M

At the backdrop of rising anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Layla Murabit (starring Nora El-Koussour), a smart high school student of Moroccan descent grows alienated in her own city, Amsterdam. Layla could be any teenager: bikes everywhere, enjoys soccer, talks back whenever she can and is indeed in your face. It is because the protagonist is easy to like and identify with, that Layla M. offers viewers a thoughtful insight into how radicalization might happen without justifying it, or demonizing those who slip down that rabbit-hole. It allows us to understand and critique without condemning the protagonist or falling into the trap of Islamophobia. Central to the movie are questions about identity, national belonging and the prevailing patriarchy.

The opening scene of Layla M. very much mirrors who she is. Unlike her mother, who does not wear a hijab, Layla wears one, on her own terms. During the soccer game, she tied it to the back of her head leaving her neck bare. She has an earnest look on her face as she diligently monitors the players in the field; she is sometimes the assistant referee. When the referee fails to call on a white player who violated the rules to the disadvantage of another of immigrant descent, Layla yells at the referee deeming his call a misjudgment. In response, the referee tells her father that she should either control her temper, or he should not bring her to the game. The father orders her to be silent. It is there and then, at the soccer field, that women in full body cover (abaya), reach out to Layla and invite her over to their group. In what seems like a scouting mission, the women chose outspoken, angry Layla to model for an image of a woman in a burqa to be used in media materials for protesting the burqa ban. Layla puts on the burqa for the shoot and expresses her eagerness to get out of it; "it is too hot," she thought.

Director de Jong makes it clear from the get-go that Layla's choices put her in direct confrontation with figures of authority, be it at home or in public. Layla's involvement with the Islamist group, protesting and posting her image online, infuriates her father. Defying him further, she wears the burqa to the dinner table and cites Qur'anic text to argue back. When a police officer asks a fellow female protester to remove her face cover, to confirm her identity, Layla defies him: "we do not ask you to remove your pants." Layla reaches the flipping point when she and her brother are arrested during a protest. Feeling that Amsterdam and her family house are no longer her home, she marries Abdel (starring Ilias Addab), a young man she met through her activism, and the two head off to Amman, Jordan. There, they aspire to live a pious life in an Islamic utopia free of racism and discrimination. Arriving in Amman immediately proves this to be an illusion. She is faced with a patriarchal structure that keeps women sidelined and in the kitchen. Not before long, she realizes that her own beloved Abdel had trained to be a suicide bomber. One of the strengths of this movie is that it smoothly unpacks the layered challenges that a young Muslim faces on a daily basis in a Western society, while acknowledging the context for these challenges. We watch Layla struggling to belong as a Dutch at a time when her own existence as a citizen seems to be contested and even rejected. Actor Ilias Addab (Abdel), recalls that while shooting the movie, he wore his beard long and felt the toll of being a non-white young male with facial hair. People were suspicious of him. To dismiss suspicions that he is a jihadi, he started wearing a cap.¹

With the rise of far-right politicians like Geert Wilders, racist anti-Muslim rhetoric (including Moroccan immigrants...