When I go to the Cannes Film Festival, I look for a lawyer-related movie to write about. Last year, I saw “Mayhem,” a horror film starring former “Walking Dead” actor, Steven Yeun, who fought his way out of a quarantined building after an anti-inhibitor virus had attacked the Big Law tenant causing everyone (from senior partner to mailroom clerk) to act out their wildest impulses. This year I saw a different type of horror film—one based on true events.

“Girls of the Sun” portrays a woman lawyer, Bahar, who shifted from the usual challenges of work-life balance to those of a veritable superhero. ISIS militants invaded her town in Kurdistan, rounded up and killed the men, captured then sold the women and girls as sex slaves and put the young boys into training “schools.” This story has been told through news reports about the all-female battalions (peshmerga or YPJ) who have fought in Iraq's Yazidi territory and across the border in Syria. But it takes on another dimension as a feature film—one of the few films selected for the official competition at Cannes.

The story is told by a French journalist (a Marie Colvin look-alike), and it is a real tear-jerker. After seeing her husband killed and her son abducted, Bahar is enslaved and sold four times before she escapes. She laments that it is even worse for the girls as young as 9 years old who are sought the most. After gaining her freedom, Bahar forms a military unit comprised entirely of former captives. These women look like other soldiers dressed in camouflage with one distinction that is prominent in the film as well as the news footage. They all wear scarves bounded by colorful floral designs or ornaments. They really are quite beautiful.