The State

2017

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
7.1| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 20 August 2017 Ended
Producted By: Archery Pictures
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-state
Synopsis

The experiences of four British men and women who leave their lives behind to join ISIS in Syria.

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Archery Pictures

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Reviews

ThiefHott Too much of everything
Executscan Expected more
Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
slusamboje This is characteristic Daesh propaganda material. It is about mental disordered, psycho retarded, scum of society...etc. persons who joined Daesh with ultimate aim to extinct others who does not "think" as they do and now asks for forgiveness because they did not succeeded in their goals. In this, so called "movie", violently is presented to us, normal people, that their causes were justified and we shall forgive them because "they did not know where they gone....Oh yes...they knew that very well.I am sick of that propaganda materials. This "movie" should be censored.
Neil Orange peel This mini-series has received a lot of criticism, with good reason it appears after my viewing of this abomination. You can all argue the toss abut how 'evil' the west may or not be, but surely even the extreme leftist, Komminsky, could not make light of ISIS recruits and their motives? Komminsky wants us to believe that British citizens who went out to Syria in 2015 to fight for ISIS were simply misguided as to ISIS's actions. Of course, in 2015 and in the year or two leading up to this, the whole planet watched the news with horror at the mass beheadings on the beach, of the aid workers beheaded live on social media, of the people burned alive in cages and of the (mostly Yazidi) children sold into sex slavery after having their fathers and brothers slaughtered in front of them. We all knew this.Is Komminsky really trying to tell us that ISIS recruits were not salivating over the thought of beheading non-believers? Did he really expect us to swallow that a Yazidi sex-slave would be saved by a disillusioned ISIS fighter? Really? What a horrifying and disgusting way to address the treatment of the Yazidis under ISIS. This is not a good way to treat such horrors. If you are female, imagine if it were you being passed around by filthy ISIS thugs like a piece of meat after having your family killed in front of you. And imagine then, if one of your nations most popular TV stations made a drama on such things and had an ISIS thug as some kind of anti-rape superhero? It's disgusting.Not only that, Komminsky manages to pull at the heart strings and lingers for some time at the aftermath of a missile strike on a baby hospital. Yes, a baby hospital. Most of them in incubators, so really sick babies too. Komminksy lingers on babies under rubble and baby body parts all over the place. However, with ISIS's atrocities, he offers nothing like the scale of graphic horror.Komminksy has pushed the boundaries for some time, but with this, he has over stepped the mark. I asked if Komminksy expected people to swallow his nonsense that ISIS are all happy-clappy, intelligent and generally lovely guys and girls who were duped into joining. Sadly, I know quite a few head in the sand liberals who will buy this hook, line and sinker.Disgusting.
Alex Heaton (azanti0029) Okay perhaps something of a wake-up call is needed for the people who wrote the scathing entirely undeserved one-star reviews of this show, out of, it would seem, hatred for any attempt to show sympathy for the characters portrayed here - I will take something of a more pragmatic approach to the material. Jumping straight in at the deep end 'The State' introduces us to four young characters as they travel from the west to Syria, each with their own delusions about what it will mean to join Islamic State and build the new state of Syria. There's young Doctor and single Mother, Shakira (Ony Uhiara - brilliant) Jalal (Sam Otto - outstanding) whose brother joined prior to him and was killed in action, who wants to fight the enemy along with his childhood friend Ziyaad (Ryan McKen) and finally Ushna (an excellent debut from Shavani Cameron)who hopes to be a 'lioness among lions' but still hates to use a shared toilet. So it is on the front lines of the fighting in Syria that these four characters find themselves. The women are taken to the female compound run by the pious hands of westerner Umm Walid (Jessica Gunning, suitably patronising in the role) While the men are trained to kill and assigned combat duty, meeting other westerners who have come to join the fight. So it is that we follow the course of their lives and the people they meet over a few short weeks.I find comments elsewhere about this shows attempts to sympathise with these young people rather vacuous and missing the point of the show entirely - There is little sympathy to be found for our leading protagonists here. We do not, for one thing, know why they came to join with perhaps the exception of Jalal. An advert for recruitment to ISIS, this show IS NOT. The threat of rape for the female characters is constant throughout the story while the men are sent into near suicide combat missions, being told a glorious death awaits them. This is a story about four people who were naively drawn into a cause, the reality of which they didn't fully comprehend until they were standing in the middle of it. Where the show is it's strongest is with the Shakira / Jalal story lines and this is as much down to the performance by the actors, as it is about the script. Casting Director Nina Gold has assembled an impressive and convincing cast here, with the stand out performance being that of Sam Otto. His inner conflict and doubt is precisely stated with just the odd look and glance, while Ony Uhiara, as the Doctor who finds she is increasingly marginalised realises her son is being turned into a killer before her very eyes, plays her growing doubt with great conviction. Special mention here must also go to child actor Nana Agyeman-Bediako who is fantastic as her son. A number of the supporting cast are extremely good as well, having cast a number of people who speak perfect Arabic. Karim Kassem is especially good as the local ISIS leader, who haunts Shakira's every move while Jack Greenless stands out as an ex-western soldier in a very under written role. Haaz Sleiman, Fayez Bakhsh and Hiam Abbass all make their mark in the story and deserve a mention. What 'The State' does, is Humanise the characters it portrays. We can probably all remember a time once where some of us were naively influenced by a political movement at the time, be that CND or protesting against perfume being used on monkeys. This is a story about that time in our youth, where we were impressionable, we could make a mistake and suddenly we find ourselves growing up very fast. The experience these people went through felt authentic and that is important because nothing shown here would in my view ever encourage a person to take the same journey. Schools would do well to show this series to their students. For me, there was one thing that was missing from the show. I felt it would have benefited from another episode prior to episode one which demonstrated how each person was drawn into this cause. The producers felt it was enough to show that they are, which is, of course, the reality but f we don't understand what draws people to a cause like this, how are we ever going to understand it?
corek-24310 Story of 4 Brits going out to Syria to support IS state in the overthrow of the Syrian regime. As the majority of British Moslems are Sunni and IS state supports the Sunni Muslims against the Shia followers, it doesn't take much effort for Sunni Muslims in Britain to go and support their fellow believers in Syria. The series pulls no punches of the brutality of the IS State and shows where it ignores the teachings of Mohammed "for their own ends" thereby corrupting the teachings of Islam. You can see how the four Brits start to slowly realize that the teachings of Islam is not really the main force of the IS leadership, they are looking for power and control and are just using the teachings of Mohammed, to lure the stupid and vulnerable, for their own ends. It shows how decent people are used, against their wishes to be humane, because of a corrupt ideology.

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