They pray to Allah and wear tightly tied headscarves, but they pose for a group photo and emphasize their femininity. You feel compassion for them when they talk wistfully about their children, whom they can only see through the bars.

When the 30-year-old Kahira is finally allowed to hug her four children in one scene, tears well up in the viewer's eyes – although he knows that this mother is a murderer.

The Israeli director Natalie Assouline portrays female Palestinian terrorists in her film debut. Nevertheless, she always allows the audience to feel the tension between sympathy and condemnation. The impressive documentary film is titled Shahida – "martyrs for Allah" in Arabic – and these prisoners do see themselves as martyrs. That is part of their self-deception.