A New Film About Young French Women Drawn to Jihadism

In “Heaven Will Wait,” a new film by the French director Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, a teen-ager named Sonia is placed under house arrest after being caught plotting to plant a bomb with a group of other girls. Sonia sulks around her parents’ Paris apartment like any adolescent who has been grounded, but her predicament is a matter of national security. Her father has ripped the bathroom door from its hinges so that she can’t hide inside, and she is required to check in daily at the local precinct, where the police ask her absentmindedly to furnish her identity card, forgetting that it has been revoked to prevent her from leaving for Syria. One night while her family is sleeping, Sonia sits on the toilet in darkness with a stolen cell phone, its glare casting light across her eyes. She pulls up a video on Ansar at-Tawhid, a French-language channel linked to ISIS, the tinny sounds of Arabic chants sending her into anxious tears. She shuts the phone off and goes into her mother’s bedroom. “I went back online—I couldn’t stop myself,” she whispers to her mom. “It’s like dozens of voices in my head telling me to go back there. I can’t take it anymore. I’m scared of being stuck, scared of leaving it all, scared of staying. I’m going mad.”