A traumatized Iraq War refugee joins an Ontario-based terror cell to exact personal revenge on the West, but eventually finds herself torn about her ultimate decision.
The first dramatic feature film to tackle the disturbing ISIS phenomenon, Afreen takes an unblinking, uncompromising look at the roots of extremism, and offers difficult solutions that the governments, religions, and peoples of the world ignore at their own peril. Two years ago, a failed attack on the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa left two men dead. Now, unbeknownst to the public, another attack plot is brewing in the city of Toronto...
On 22 October, 2014, MICHAEL ZEHAF-BIBEAU, a radicalized Canadian Muslim, shot and killed a sentry at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, subsequently stormed Parliament, and perished in a hail of gunfire.
Official investigations determined the crazed gunman acted alone.But did he? Or, worse, had he belonged to a deeper network of organized terror cells embedded in Western society... cells determined to strike even harder?
In late 2015, filmmaker AASHISH CHANANA set out to answer those questions. And as the global bloodbath of 2016 unfolded - with ISIS at the peak of its power and influence - he discovered a chilling connection between Zehaf-Bibeau's rampage and a thwarted bombing attempt in Toronto two years later to the day - an attack that would have slain hundreds.The resulting film, Afreen, reconstructs that connection - revealing disturbing ISIS activities in the heart of the modern West, showing just how close the people of Toronto came to suffering a 9/11-level catastrophe, and, most importantly, shedding light on the life of the troubled and all-too-human young woman at the very center of the terror plot.
At once a moving drama, a breakneck thriller, a gut- wrenching war parable, and a tender love story, Afreen is a film of, and for, our uncertain and tumultuous times.
