Best movies like Girls' War

A group of pioneering nuns bravely stand up to the Catholic Church patriarchy, fighting for their livelihoods, convictions and equality against an all-powerful Cardinal. From marching in Selma in 1965 to the Women’s March in 2018, these women have reshaped our society with their bold acts of defiance.

This is a documentary film chronicling the brutal Honour Killing of Banaz Mahmod, a young British Kurdish woman in London, killed by her own family for choosing a life for herself.

BROTHERS AT WAR is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time.  Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story.

With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

Looking to investigate recruitment techniques of ISIS to lure women into Syria, a journalist creates a Facebook profile of a Muslim convert. When an ISIS recruiter contacts her online character, she experiences the process first hand.

Turtles can fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iran border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

In 1939, at a Paris café, six friends of various nationalities vow to meet again at the same spot after the end of WW2.

Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.

At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.

An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. American director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country as seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.

As rates of femicide and domestic abuse soar in Turkey and democratic rights for women are increasingly eroded, a lawyer and her clients bravely risk everything for their freedom by standing up to the government and putting violent men behind bars.

The inspiring story of three women risking their lives to incite political, activist, and armed uprisings in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.

Paris, spring 2015. Faustine travels to Syria with her little son to join ISIS; but, once in Raqqa, she soon realizes the hell she is gotten herself into. Her husband Sylvain quickly understands that the French government is powerless to help him, so he plans with some friends a high-risk extraction operation to get his family back.

Akif left Germany to join up with the PKK guerrilla fighters. His diary records the doubts, dreams and political discussions that the fighters share as they march through the mountains, and in the meetings where the women criticize male prejudices.

A recently orphaned young Kurdish-French woman travels to Iraqi Kurdistan to find her mother's village, likely destroyed during the Anfal genocide. On her journey she meets two American film students who are traveling to remote villages screening Charlie Chaplin films. They decide to help her search, an undertaking that brings them to the war-weary Mount Qandil, dubbed by the locals the Kurdish Bermuda Triangle, along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders.

In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.

Set during the Iraq-Iran war in the 80s, the film tells of a tragicomic road trip set in Iraq's Kurdistan.

Kenza and Yaël are two young French women who go to Syria to fight alongside the Kurdish forces. There they meet Zara, a Yezidi survivor. Born in different cultures but deeply united, the women-fighters heal their past wounds and discover their present strength, especially the fear they inspire in their opponents. The three young women soon bound together and become true sisters-in-arms.

Marine officer Alexandra is tough enough to kick any guy's ass in a bar fight, but there's one opponent she can't beat: military policy. When she returns to her conservative hometown from Iraq with a mysterious personal life, she finds herself charged with preparing a tempestuous teenage girl to boot camp.

In October of 2016 the battle for Mosul, the Islamic State's self-proclaimed capital in northern Iraq, began. With unprecedented access, Bernard-Henri Lévy and his team follow the Kurdish units and the Iraqi special Golden Division. From street to street, they fight together to regain this city of two million inhabitants. Though successful, the hopes of the Kurdish fighters might not always align with those of their allies.

Kurdistan, partitioned between Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, could play a major role in a torn Middle East. But who are the Kurds? What influence do they have? Who exactly is Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party? An enlightening investigation by Luis Miranda.

Inspired by the mythology of the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, over 300 foreign volunteers chose to give up their comfortable lives and go fight ISIS in Raqqa. We filmed them there, fly-on-the-wall style, fighting, talking, laughing, being attacked by suicide bombs and sniper fire. We were with them until Raqqa was freed. And then we followed them back home – changed forever. Every night, between July and October 2017, young men with no previous military experience pushed through the most dangerous streets of the world. They conquered Raqqa, block after block. They met death and violence. And eventually, along with the Kurdish and Arab forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces, they liberated Raqqa and ended the reign of the most murderous cult of the XXI century. Some of them went back home. We were there when they told their story to their families. This is the untold story of the young Westerners who left everything behind to fight ISIS.

Back in his hometown after his university studies, Servan is witness to the burning down of his village and a series of other atrocities which eventually lead him to join the Kurdish resistance. In the ranks of the Kurdish liberation movement, he is seriously injured in clashes with the Turkish army. In order not to slow down his comrades and allow them to escape, Servan insists that he be left behind. Against all odds, he survives, enduring several days of acute pain. However, his friends cannot come back to pick him up, the area being surrounded by Turkish soldiers. As the soldiers approach, Servan decides to leave his hide away in spite of his serious injuries. He sets out to find his friends, overcoming countless obstacles in the forest, but nevertheless helped by Kurdish villagers throughout his journey. However, he is hunted down by death squads and village guards.

In Paris' cosmopolitan and colorful 10th arrondissement, Philippe, who's fresh out of prison, crosses paths with Avdal, a Kurd who is trying to track down an Iraqi war criminal. Avdal, who dreams of staying in France, plans to bring his fiancee Siba to Paris. She's due to arrive in the next few days. The two men strike up a friendship and when Avdal dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Philippe finds himself left to organize the funeral arrangements. What should he do with the body? Siba arrives in Paris, and soon learns that Avdal has died. She is taken in by a group of Kurdish men and before long she also meets Philippe - all of whom are quite smitten by her beauty. Meanwhile, Avdal's father Cheto, a devout Muslim, comes to Paris to grieve for his son. He intends to force Siba to return to her homeland, but the young woman has now had a taste of freedom.

"Jiyan" takes place in Halabja about five years after Saddam's infamous chemical attack in 1988. Diyari (Kurdo Galali) has come from his new homeland, America, to put up a badly needed new orphanage. As construction proceeds, he gradually becomes acquainted with the tragic individual stories of the survivors. Prime among these is orphan girl Jiyan (Pirsheng Berzinji), and her lively young cousin Sherko (Choman Hawrami). Although he seems to fit right into life in this impoverished town, Diyari can hardly absorb the catastrophe that hit there, nor can he accept the level of injury that he encounters. When the orphanage is ready, Diyari says his goodbyes, plunging Jiyan back into quiet despair.

Two young Kurdish refugees, recently arrived in Germany struggle to make their way through the harshness of the occidental city. Their encounter with a gang of Turks will rapidly led them into an inevitable tragical spiral filled with death and revenge.

This is the story of two women on opposite ends of a lifetime, a very young, curious Jiyan and her life-weary but resistant grandmother Berfe, in order to save the person who links them to each other.

Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, a female Kurdish fighter guides her fellow fighters in the resistance to defend their city, Kobanê, from the deadly threat of ISIS. A real story of war, sacrifice, love and hope that kept the whole world on tenterhooks.

An Iraqi journalist joins an army of uneasy allies and unforgettable characters in the epic battle to liberate the city of Mosul from the Islamic State.

A rogue gunman is assassinating high-ranking military officers one by one. When Gunnery Sgt. Brandon Beckett is informed his father, legendary shooter Thomas Beckett has been killed, Brandon springs into action to take out the perpetrator.

Free to Run tells the amazing story of the running movement over the past five decades, the struggle for the right to run - especially for women – against conservative Federations, the explosion of grass roots road races and marathons, until the boom of running as a vast business enterprise.

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama is a documentary film produced by Edward Norton broadcast in November 2009 on HBO, which follows Barack Obama and various members of his campaign team, including David Axelrod, through the two years leading up to the United States presidential election on November 4th, 2008.