‘I believe stories choose people,” says Dina Amer, explaining why she spent six difficult years making a film about the woman dubbed “Europe’s first female suicide bomber”. She adds: “I never would have chosen this story in a million years.”
It later transpired that the woman, Hasna Aït Boulahcen, did not, in fact, blow herself up. She was in an apartment raided by French police in November 2015, shortly after the Islamist terror attacks on the Bataclan nightclub, the Stade de France and other Paris locations that killed 137 people. Also in the apartment was Boulahcen’s cousin, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who had masterminded the attacks and persuaded Boulahcen to join Islamic State. With the apartment surrounded, another of the terrorists is thought to have detonated the explosives. Moments before, Boulahcen was heard screaming to police outside: “Please help! Let me jump! I want to leave!”
