The desire to be beautiful is still strong, no matter what the circumstances. The women giggle and pass around fragments of a broken mirror. This is a world which exists only behind prison walls, where a lullaby whispered lovingly in a baby's ear echoes with the sting of hatred, where compassion and disdain live closely together, and where empowerment grows from despair. There is no black or white in this film, only painful shades of gray.

Israeli director Natalie Assouline chronicles the lives of women who are serving time in prison for involvement in terrorist attacks in Israel. The intimate portrait, filmed over the course of two years, tries to uncover the motivations behind the actions of these women.

Kahira, a mother of five, is serving three life terms for smuggling a suicide bomber to the heart of Jerusalem where he blew himself up, killing three people. Waffa was captured on her way to carry out a suicide attack in an Israeli hospital, where she had been treated for six months after an accident. Samar built bombs and was arrested while pregnant with her first child who is born in the course of the film.


We share the daily lives of these women, we are with them when they give birth, we listen to their pain when they talk about husbands who abandoned them, and we watch them take charge within the prison structures . We hear of religious ideology, but also of discrimination and despair in the world these women come from. It's a world where a woman who has shamed her family has but one way of redeeming herself.

This film is structured as a journey into an unknown world between good and bad. At every turn we receive new information and experience new emotions that make it impossible to remain coherent. We find ourselves liking these women, but we feel discomfort in the fact that we do. We want to pity them, but they are too strong for our pity. We get close to them, and a moment later we are thrown clear, horrified by their actions and their lack of remorse - fascinated at the same time… There is no black or white in this film, only painful shades of gray.

Berlin (Forum - Fipresci Award), Thessaloniki (comp.), DocAviv (comp.), Montreal, Zurich (comp.), Belgrade (comp.), Mar del Plata, CPH:DOX, Cagliari (special Award), Sao Paolo (comp.), Osnabruek (Peace Film Award), Input 2009, Hungary, Zagreb International Film Festival, Serbia, Cork, Philippines, Hamburg, Geneva, Spain (Premios Ondas Award), Uruguay, Monte Carlo (nom. Best News Doc)