The Road to Raqqa

Directed by Anastasia Trofimova

The road to Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the “Islamic State”, has been long and hard. Now encircled, the world’s largest terror group resorts to booby-trapping roads and houses, as well as deploying suicide bombers, snipers and grenade-dropping drones. This was the most dangerous and unpredictable film our crew has worked on. It also became a testament to the territorial demise of a cult that uprooted the lives of millions of people across Iraq and Syria and contributed to the largest refugee crisis of our time. There are three stops on the road leading to the Raqqa frontline: the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) base, the first medical point and the foreign volunteers camp. With unprecedented access, we managed to document what each of them face in the final weeks before the fall of Raqqa.