July 2017, with the reconquest of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the decline of the IS caliphate begins.
When the offensive on IS capital Raqqa, in Syria, is deployed a short time later, many IS fighters take flight. Many Belgian and Dutch families have heard about their children and grandchildren for the first time: calendars from the caliphate.
For their children it is often too late, but some grandparents again have the hope to see their grandchildren (again, or even for the first time).
For months they are thrown back and forth between hope and despair, do they tap on doors that remain closed, do they fight for the rights of their innocent grandchildren, is there someone who wants to help them? Or do they see their grandchildren disappearing in the black hole that IS left behind in Syria and Iraq after their children?
Rudi Vranckx follows a number of Belgian and Dutch grandparents in their months-long struggle and travels through the Kurdish prison camps in Syria, via an orphanage in Baghdad to the border area of Turkey. A series of human stories at the crossroads of slow journalism and instant history.
ALSO AVAILABLE WITH FRENCH AND ARABIC SUBTITLES