PROFILE (2021) 

A struggling journalist, Amy Whittaker, is on the cusp of a huge story. Whittaker (Valene Kane) has been following the recent trend of young girls fleeing their home to go join ISIS, fully converting to Islam, and therefore renouncing all ability to ever return home. Social media has been the tool the jihadists have been wielding to peddle both their fear mongering and romanticising. Amy creates a new Facebook account as new convert Melody Nelson and with some colleagues’ help she engages in a conversation with an extremist named Bilel (Shazad Latif). 

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Bilel is a recruiter of sorts for ISIS and takes an immediate interest in Melody. Their engagements are documented by Amy via screen recordings. The recordings are catalogued in a folder on her desktop and serve as the progression in the film’s runtime of their unorthodox courtship. Amy’s facade as Melody asks Bilel probing questions about the propaganda, his motivations, his process. He in turn demands loyalty by making her share her screen but promises royalty in the throes of marriage. 

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“There’s no future in Britain.” he tells Melody.

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The social circle around Amy includes her friend Kathy, her boyfriend Matt and her editor Vicki. All of which lend their support in the appropriate context. Mostly in the form of exhaustive patience as Melody and Bilel graduate from small talk about cats and freedom to intimate episodes with Bilel teaching her to cook curry and Melody visiting the sweet shop that he enjoyed in his youth. I feel this is what pandemic dating must look like. What started as an assignment to pay the rent for Amy is turning downward to a seductive slope of danger. They begin to reveal to each other the trauma and abandonment of their past. The air is thick with the scent of sadness and desperation between these two individuals. Amy feels stuck with her routine and stale life in London. She has become entranced, ensnared in the honey pot that Bilel has made for her. 

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After a brief scare on Amy’s part, she takes part in a ritual to marry Bilel via Skype before proceeding to take the next steps to fly to Amsterdam and eventually Syria and presumably into his arms. She initially balks at this dramatic next step, but knows this is the best route for the story. Right? The climax of the film takes place in an Amsterdam hotel room. Up until this point, the viewer has been cemented to Amy’s flat in London. Matt has left her, her editor decides to drop the story (which is incredibly unprofessional at this point) and Amy gets into her first real altercation with Bilel. To reveal the ending would be unfair and ultimately pointless. This was based on a true story and the very notion of these events unfolding is terrifying.