Directed by Nasib Farah & Søren Steen Jespersen | Denmark | Danish w/English subtitles | 2015 | Documentary | 58 mins
US Premiere
Film Source: Made in Copenhagen
Winner of the Best Mid-Length Award at the prestigious Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Warriors from the North offers an intimate look at Danish jihadists joining the ranks of Al–Shabaad. The topic is highly relevant, but what makes this film exceptional is the unprecedented access to a number of young Muslims who leave Europe to fight with Islamic terrorists and kill in the name of God. Over a four-year period the filmmakers (Danish-Somali journalist Nashib Farah and documentarian Soren Steen Jespersen) were able to infiltrate a terrorist cell in Copenhagen and get close up and personal with several radicalized young Danes from Somali origin. The film sheds light on rootless young people whose lives went so wrong. “It’s so easy to write off militant fundamentalists as psychopaths who should be locked up for life,” said Jespersen in a recent interview. “You’re either with us or with them has been the rhetoric. But in this film I get to discuss the processes that lead up to a young man pushing the trigger and taking 24 people with him in death. I get to discuss the human aspect of violence and the human consequences of his action.”