Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.User-friendly video and smartphone technology have changed the face of documentary this century, allowing people to record their own experiences in conflict-ridden environments — recent prime examples including 2019’s Syrian testament For Sama and the essential current release No Other Land, a Palestinian-Israeli report from the West Bank. Here is another powerful example: Mediha, directed by American documentarist Hasan Oswald — and substantially shot by its subject, Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad.A teenager from Iraq’s marginalised Yazidi minority, Mediha was captured by Isis militia at the age of 10, and sold several times over into sexual slavery. At 15, now rescued and living in a camp in northern Iraq with her brothers — who are separated from their parents and a younger brother, all missing — Mediha films her everyday life and narrates her painful experience, much of which she has previously been unable to recount or even, she says, to contemplate.The film derives its emotional force not least from the courage and candour with which Mediha opens up about what she has endured. She is lively, articulate, charismatic and manifestly blessed with imposing fortitude: one sequence shows her facing the challenge of identifying her abductor from photos. We begin to understand just how intense Mediha’s trauma is when we see her crumpling at the sound of muezzin calls that trigger memories of her captivity.Meanwhile, Oswald follows the efforts of rescuers, including the late Dr Nemam Ghafouri, to locate Mediha’s mother and brother — these strands providing the intensity of an espionage drama. There comes an extraordinary cathartic moment that won’t leave anyone dry-eyed, a scene of transcendent happiness — the joy only partly defused by what follows, as we realise that the scars of enforced family separation cannot be healed overnight. Executive produced by Emma Thompson, Mediha offers hope, but not the comforting illusion that it comes painlessly.★★★★☆In UK cinemas from November 22
