Flana review: TIFF 2025
‘Flana’ explores the disproportionate disappearance of women and girls in Iraq through the lens of personal experiences.
This is a deeply personal story for filmmaker Zahraa Ghandour. When they were 10 years old, her best friend and neighbour, Nour, was dragged off in the middle of the night. She never saw her again. Now, decades later, Ghandour is trying to understand why girls can be so easily erased from the collective consciousness. Since Ghandour doesn’t know Nour’s fate, she explores the narrative through Layla. Layla was abandoned as a child and forced to choose between prison and a shelter for women and girls.
Despite Ghandour sharing no statistics in the film, there is clearly an epidemic of Iraqi women and girls disappearing or being murdered. It’s one of the many places in the world in which this issue persists. There’s even a cemetery of unmarked graves for women who were the victims of domestic violence or “honour killings.”
Read the full review of Flana at thatshelf.com
