A grandfather’s bid to rescue children of Daesh fighters
One of the most heartstringtugging aspects about the documentary “Children of the Enemy” by Chilean-Swedish auteur Gorki Glaser-Muller, is parental love and compassion for a child.
But the movie, that recently had its world premiere at the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX, goes beyond that in conveying the message that children still need care even if their parents have committed horrific crimes.
Muller follows his friend and the “hero” of his documentary,
Patricio Galvez, a Chilean-Swedish musician in his 50s, as he goes in search of his seven grandchildren. The story is well-known in Sweden because their father, Michael Skramo, joined Daesh and traveled along with his radicalized young wife, Amanda, and four kids to Raqqa in Syria sometime in 2014. The couple had three more children in Syria before the parents were killed, leaving behind seven orphans.
At home in Gothenburg, Galvez leads an unhappy life pining for a daughter he adored and yearning to see her children. It is that thread of humanity that makes this crisp 95-minute documentary so important and powerful. In 2019, he flew to Irbil, Iraq, with Muller, who was an acquaintance. The documentary follows him as he sits in hotel rooms, through long, lonely nights, surrounded by the toys and clothes he had bought for the children. His soul-searching over the radicalization of his daughter is a large part of the narrative, and one that happily saves this documentary from being a run-ofthe-mill rescue mission led by a golden hero.
Muller’s movie has very little drama, something a fictionalized version of the story would have compelled him to do. He said he was to an extent “a fish out of water on this odyssey,” telling media that “to be honest, I was terrified of going there. I feared for my life.” But this emotion serves the film in showing how invested Muller was in the mission and many viewers will empathize when, after a breakthrough, both the grandfather and the director break down in tears.