On 22 October, 2014, MICHAEL ZEHAF-BIBEAU, a radicalized Canadian Muslim, shot and killed a sentry at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, subsequently stormed Parliament, and perished in a hail of gunfire.
Official investigations determined the crazed gunman acted alone.
But did he? Or, worse, had he belonged to a deeper network of organized terror cells embedded in Western society… cells determined to strike even harder?
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In late 2015, filmmaker AASHISH CHANANA set out to answer those questions. And as the global bloodbath of 2016 unfolded – with ISIS at the peak of its power and influence – he discovered a chilling connection between Zehaf-Bibeau’s rampage and a thwarted bombing attempt in Toronto two years later to the day – an attack that would have slain hundreds.
The resulting film, Afreen, reconstructs that connection – revealing disturbing ISIS activities in the heart of the modern West, showing just how close the people of Toronto came to suffering a 9/11-level catastrophe, and, most importantly, shedding light on the life of the troubled and all-too-human young woman at the very center of the terror plot.
At once a moving drama, a breakneck thriller, a gut- wrenching war parable, and a tender love story, Afreen is a film of, and for, our uncertain and tumultuous times.
