'Children of the Enemy' Review: Fighting for the Children of ISIS Fighters
'Children of the Enemy' Review: Fighting for the Children of ISIS Fighters
A grandfather's tense, tireless efforts to rescue his seven grandchildren from the camp they've been in since their ISIS-loyal parents died.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Running time: Running time: 95 MIN.
Courtesy of CPH:DOX
Whenever we see them, the seven contested children at the heart of Gorki Glaser-Müller’s taut, highly emotive “Children of the Enemy” have their eyes blurred over, to help protect their identities. It’s a strangely reassuring element in a film that at certain moments may be watched through nail-bitten fingers: If the seven grandkids of Patricio Galvez, the tenacious Chilean-Swedish musician fighting to get them out of Syria, need such protections, it must mean that they are still alive — an assumption anything but guaranteed by their pitiably malnourished state and the precariousness of life in the notorious Al-Hol detention camp where they are being kept.