Escape from RaqqaMovies like Escape from Raqqa
- Key Features:
- ISIS, Syria, Extraction, Family, Rescue mission, Political thriller, Survival, High-stakes, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Political thriller enthusiasts, Viewers interested in true stories, Fans of suspenseful dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Hope → Dread → Relief']
Escape from Raqqa

Paris, spring 2015. Faustine travels to Syria with her little son to join ISIS; but, once in Raqqa, she soon realizes the hell she is gotten herself into. Her husband Sylvain quickly understands that the French government is powerless to help him, so he plans with some friends a high-risk extraction operation to get his family back.
Escape from Raqqa
Kamal resolves to change his life for the better, and so leaves Belgium to help victims of the war in Syria. But when he arrives, he is forced to join a militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters, who promise to reunite him with his brother. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son.

Sam, a freelance journalist, decides to investigate the growing phenomenon of disaffected youth joining extremist groups. He infiltrates a group of four young people who have been tasked with the creation of a jihadist cell and whose mission is to destabilise the city centre of Paris.

Afghanistan. War correspondent Elsa Casanova is taken hostage by the Taliban. Faced with her imminent execution, a Special Forces unit is dispatched to free her. In some of the world’s most breathtaking yet hostile landscapes, a relentless pursuit begins between her kidnappers who have no intention of letting their prey escape them and a group of soldiers who risk their lives in pursuit of their single aim – to bring her home alive. This strong, independent woman and these men of duty are thrown together and forced to confront situations of great danger that inextricably bind them – emotionally, violently and intimately.

A mother attempts to keep her family safe as war rages and a sniper lies in wait outside her home.

After being imprisoned by the Assad regime in Syria, Hamid now works undercover as part of a secret group pursuing their leaders, including the guard he suspects was responsible for his torture.

Ivan sets off on a dangerous mission into Syria to save his ex-commander Grey after his capture by ISIS. With the help of U.S. military patrols, he succeeds in freeing Grey and attempts to escape the country while being hunted by terrorists.

Soviet Georgia, 1983. Preparations for Nika and Ana's wedding are in full swing and it's a big day for both of their elite families. For the newlyweds and their friends, however, the celebrations are in fact part of a cover-up, as they plot an audacious escape from the Soviet Union.

In France, terrorist groups and intelligence agencies battle in a merciless war everyday, in the name of radically opposed ideologies. Yet, terrorist and secret agents lead almost the same lives. Condemned to secrecy, these masters of manipulation follow the same methods. Alex and Al Barad are two of them. The former is the head of the D.G.S.E.'s (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French equivalent of the CIA or the MI6) counter-terrorism unit while the latter reigns over a terrorist network, and both fight using the most ruthless of weapons: human beings.

In November 2015, a series of unprecedented and deadly attacks hits Paris. The anti-terrorist police led by Heloise and her chief commander Fred face an unprecedented level of pressure. In a race against the clock, they must find the perpetrators of the attacks as quickly as possible before they can strike again, travelling across Europe and beyond in one of the biggest manhunts in history.

Roja lives in a Tamil village, and her sister is about to marry a man from the city, who decides to marry Roja instead and gets a job assignment in Kashmir, where some militants decide to kidnap them.

Looking to investigate recruitment techniques of ISIS to lure women into Syria, a journalist creates a Facebook profile of a Muslim convert. When an ISIS recruiter contacts her online character, she experiences the process first hand.

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

Twenty-five years ago Adib, a promising young officer in the Syrian military police, suddenly left Damascus under suspicious circumstances. Abandoning the love of his life Fatima, he made his way to Canada and wiped the slate clean. When his daughter Muna suddenly disappears in Damascus, his past threatens to violently catch up to him. Teaming up with a Canadian emissary, Adib must now confront the turmoil he thought he left behind in order to find Muna.

Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.

One of the members of a gang of thieves commits a serious mistake that force them to work for a ruthless gang of drug dealers, endangering the future of the team, their lives and those of their families.

After a bank job goes badly wrong, three desperate criminals take a young woman and a father and child hostage - it's the beginning of a frantic and violent road trip that not all of them will survive.

An American is kidnapped while attending a conference in Cairo and ends up in prison in Iran on spying charges. His wife goes to Iran, determined to get him out.

In Thailand, ex-Green Beret John James Rambo joins a group of mercenaries to venture into war-torn neighboring Myanmar to rescue a group of Christian aid workers who have been kidnapped by a ruthless local infantry unit.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe. Carole is a young nurse with a humanitarian aid group that has reached the end of its mission. But just then, the young woman and her two colleagues are kidnapped by strangers for mysterious reasons. Held captive, cared for and kept alive in an oppressive and sinister setting, the three prisoners soon discover with horror what their kidnappers truly have in store for them.

When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.

An Iraqi journalist joins an army of uneasy allies and unforgettable characters in the epic battle to liberate the city of Mosul from the Islamic State.

When a deadly mist engulfs Paris, people find refuge in the upper floors of the buildings. With no information, no electricity and hardly any supplies, Mathieu, Anna and their daughter Sarah try to survive the disaster.

Samuel Pierret is a nurse who saves the wrong guy – a thief whose henchmen take Samuel's pregnant wife hostage to force him to spring their boss from the hospital. A race through the subways and streets of Paris ensues, and the body count rises. Can Samuel evade the cops and the criminal underground and deliver his beloved to safety?

In 1980s Beirut, Mason Skiles is a former U.S. diplomat who is called back into service to save a colleague from the group that is possibly responsible for his own family's death. Meanwhile, a CIA field agent who is working under cover at the American embassy is tasked with keeping Mason alive and ensuring that the mission is a success.

When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the "gang of barbarians".

Ten years after the Black Death devastated the country, a poor family sets out on a journey to search for better living conditions. In a deserted mountain pass, they are attacked by a gang of ruthless killer thieves. The only one spared is 19 year old Signe. She is taken prisoner, and the gang brings her back to their camp. Here, she soon learns that they have a fate worse than death in store for her, and realises that her only hope is to escape.

Someone is killing Parisians of Arab ethnicity. When an Algerian diplomat is murdered by the same assailant, two Algerian detectives are sent to help the French with the investigation and they have their own ways of doing things.

Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.

Bloch, an Israeli secret agent, seeks refuge in the French embassy in Libya to escape being killed. Augier, his French opposite number, has to get him to safety in a diplomatic suitcase.

By day, they're invisible—valets, hostesses, and bartenders at a luxury hotel. By night, they're the Carjackers, a crew of skilled drivers who track and rob wealthy clients on the road. As they plan their ultimate heist, the hotel director hires a ruthless hitman, to stop them at all costs. With danger closing in, can Nora, Zoe, Steve, and Prestance pull off their biggest score yet?

Lisa and Julien are married and lead a happy uneventful life with their son Oscar. But their life radically changes one morning, when the police comes to arrest Lisa on murder charges. She's sentenced to 20 years of prison. Convinced of his wife's innocence, Julien decides to act. How far will he be willing to go for her?

Best friends Marie and Alexia decide to spend a quiet weekend at Alexia's parents' secluded farmhouse. But on the night of their arrival, the girls' idyllic getaway turns into an endless night of horror.

What started as a simple escort mission will soon turn to chaos as the prisoners of Koh Kla take over the prison grounds. A special task force gets trapped in the prison will have to fight their way out for survival, to protect a key witness.

Kenza and Yaël are two young French women who go to Syria to fight alongside the Kurdish forces. There they meet Zara, a Yezidi survivor. Born in different cultures but deeply united, the women-fighters heal their past wounds and discover their present strength, especially the fear they inspire in their opponents. The three young women soon bound together and become true sisters-in-arms.

When the Diallo family return home from their holiday, they find the locks have been changed and the new occupants maintain they are in "their home". With no one to turn to, patriarch Paul gets closer to Mickey, a shady local man with a penchant for all things extreme and illegal. Soon the once anti-violent teacher is approaching the point of no return…

An ex-soldier with PTSD is hired to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman while he's out of town.

While being transferred to another prison, two convicts - Stéphane Carella and Paul Brandon - effect a miraculous escape. They are pursued across the Verdon Gorge before arriving at an isolated farmhouse whose owner, Laura, offers them sanctuary. Since the death of her husband, Laura has longed to get her own back on the police and she agrees to help Carella and Brandon in their scheme to rob a casino in Nice. After a shoot out with the casino’s owners, Carella realises that not everything is what it seems. Brandon is not what he appears...

In a Parisian parking lot Sonia finds herself trapped in her car with her son and the daughter of her boyfriend Fred, who has been left outside, powerless to deal with the situation: an anti-tank mine has been set under the car. Sonia is a bomb-disposal expert, who works for a NGO with Fred. She just got back from a mission in Ukraine and, while she's used to face dangerous situations, with the children's lives on the line the stakes have never been higher. Along with colleagues Igor and Camille, who came to the rescue, Sonia and Fred have 30 minutes to defuse the bomb and work out who could be the mastermind behind this. Will they stand united until the end or will the family implode under pressure?

A diplomatic official is captured and imprisoned while touring a war zone, so a team of elite female commandos is assembled to infiltrate a women's prison for a daring rescue.

Lisa, aka Kali, who has nothing left to lose when she finds out her husband has been executed in Rio to cover up a corruption scandal. A former Special Forces recruit, she heads to Brazil with fists, blood and explosives, to Know the truth

Alone in the mountains of Switzerland, Anne discovers that her isolated chalet is on surveillance and has been bugged. Caught up by her former life as an intelligence secret agent and an affair with her handler, Anne can only count on herself to get out alive.

When a former CIA operative is kidnapped by a group of terrorists, his son learns there is no plan for his father to be saved—so he launches his own rescue operation.

Battle-hardened O’Hara leads a lively mercenary team of soldiers on a daring mission: rescue hostages from their captors in remote Africa. But as the mission goes awry and the team is stranded, O’Hara’s squad must face a bloody, brutal encounter with a gang of rebels.

NATO operative Jacques Kristoff (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is summoned into action—on his birthday, no less—to track down Galina Konstantin (Laura Harring), who has stolen an extremely valuable and dangerous top-secret container from the Slovakian Government. Finding Galina doesn't take long, and Jacques must wrap up the mission by returning Galina and the contraband to his superiors by train. Things seem to be going smoothly as Jacques and Galina board the train posing as a couple, but soon all hell breaks loose.

A policeman takes his family on a holiday, and after almost hitting a wild hog, the car won't start. They get hike with a guy scrutinizing his pretty wife. Shortly after, she disappears.

Young and full of life, Murielle has a promising future ahead of her when she meets and falls head over heels for Mounir. A wedding soon follows, and the happy couple quickly set about preparing to make a family. However, with family come ties, and none come as tight as that between Mounir and his adoptive father. As Murielle continues to bring new life into the family, frictions between Mounir and Doctor Pinget reach boiling point. Helpless to extract her husband and children from the wealthy nest that Doctor Pinget has provided for them, Murielle is drawn into an unhealthy family dynamic. There is only one way out of this nightmare, and for Murielle all sense of reasoning begins to abandon her.

HELD FOR RANSOM tells the true story of Danish photojournalist Daniel Rye who was held hostage for 398 days in Syria by the terror organization ISIS along with several other foreign nationals including the American journalist, James Foley. The film follows Daniel’s struggle to survive in captivity, his friendship with James, and the nightmare of the Rye family back home in Denmark as they try to do everything in their power to save their son. At the center of this crisis, we find hostage negotiator, Arthur, who plays a pivotal role in securing Daniel’s release.

October 2015. French customs seize seven tonnes of cannabis in the heart of the capital. The same day, Hubert Antoine, a former mole with a shady past, contacts Stéphane Vilner, a journalist at Libération. He claims to be able to demonstrate the existence of State drug trafficking led by Jacques Billard, prominent media figure and high-ranking French police officer. Suspicious at first, the young journalist finally dives into an investigation that will lead him to the darkest corners of the Republic.

Dominique, a well-trained assassin, flees from her troubled past in an attempt to begin a new life in South America. However, she soon finds herself in a town plagued with violence and corruption. Facing brutal attacks from the police and mafia, Dominique must decide whether to protect herself or an innocent family that has taken her in.

Abel, Marianne and their 13-year-old son Joseph live together in Paris. Their everyday existence is thrown into turmoil when Abel and Marianne discover that Joseph has secretly sold valuables from the family home to finance a mysterious ecological project he and his friends have in Africa. They’re about to save the planet.

It is the winter of 2018, the men and women of the UAE military are deployed to provide aid. At the Mocha Base, spirits are high as three Emirati soldiers anticipate an imminent return home. While on their final routine patrol, the three soldiers, Ali, Bilal and Hindasi are ambushed by heavily armed militants on their route, through a narrow canyon. Trapped, wounded, and out of communication range, the three soldiers realize the gravity of their situation. They are running out of options, munitions - and time. Back at the base, their commander receives word and realizes that the assault on the UAE army patrol was premeditated. A rescue mission is quickly put into action, but will air and land support reach the men in time, and will they survive?

When his wife is kidnapped by terrorists for ransom, veteran war hero Brad Paxton races against the clock to rescue her in a daring and deadly operation that pits him against powerful and dark forces.

A thriller in which a battle of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist escalates into a lethal battle of wills.

While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.

A spy navigates the precarious terrain of love and survival during an undercover mission in Syria.

A washed-up Marseilles cop (Auteuil) earns a chance at redemption by protecting a woman from the man who killed her parents as he is about to be released from prison.

Following a bungled robbery, three violent criminals take a young woman, a middle-aged man, and a child hostage and force them to drive them outside Rome to help them make a clean getaway.

April 1988, Ouvéa Island, New Caledonia. 30 gendarmes are taken hostage by a group of Kanak freedom fighters. 300 soldiers are sent from France to re-establish order. 2 men confront each other: Philippe Legorjus, chief of the terrorist squad, and Alphonse Dianou, head of the kidnappers. Through their shared values, they will attempt to make discussion triumph. But, in the middle of a presidential election, when the stakes are political, order isn't always dictated by morality. A violent and troubling epic that marks the return of Mathieu Kassovitz in front and behind the camera.

Evading a scandal, a couple from Istanbul starts over in a town on the Aegean coast — but quickly discover the locals are determined to get rid of them.

A brutal home-jacking goes hopelessly wrong. Dave, one of the two robbers, manages to run off, leaving his brother Kenneth behind. Four years later, Kenneth is released from prison and much has changed. Dave has his life back on track and is trying to help Kenneth however possible, but is witnessing how the highly strung Kenneth tries to win back his ex-girlfriend Sylvie.

Ethan and team take on their most impossible mission yet—eradicating 'The Syndicate', an International and highly-skilled rogue organization committed to destroying the IMF.

When ISIS took their homes, families and city, one group of men fought to take it all back. Based on true events, this is the story of the Nineveh SWAT team, a renegade police unit who waged a guerrilla operation against ISIS in a desperate struggle to save their home city of Mosul.

Lucas and his team are after a gang of Serbian criminals using NATO-issued weapons. As the investigation leads him to Paris, Lucas attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter, a young narc officer.

Kabul, August 15, 2021. US troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan, while the Taliban are marching on the capital to seize power. Amid the chaos, Commander Mohamed Bida and his men are in charge of security at the French embassy, the last Western mission to remain open. Trapped along with 500 people, left to their own devices, the team must reach the airport at all costs. A perilous mission with no guarantee of success to flee the hell of Kabul and rescue what remains of humanity.

The story of a busy man, who fills his time travelling to Africa, South America and the Middle East. His passion for his job has distanced him from his loved ones. He’s been divorced for three years and has since seen his son very little. When the latter disappears, he is forced to stand still, and soon discovers things about his ex-wife and, above all, his son. A terrible feeling of guilt overwhelms him and he decides to find his son at all costs...

Elyas, a former Special Forces soldier who has become paranoid since a mission in Afghanistan, is recruited to ensure the safety of Amina and her daughter Nour, 13 years old, both of whom came from the Middle East for the holidays. As he takes office, Elyas senses something is up.

In Istanbul, retired CIA operative Bryan Mills and his wife are taken hostage by the father of a kidnapper Mills killed while rescuing his daughter.

After completing his required decade of military service and being honored as a hero, a North Korean sergeant makes a sudden shocking attempt to defect to the South, risking life and limb for the chance to finally determine his own destiny.

International assassin Walker is compromised during a mission and sent to a reassignment center for a new identity. During his stay at the facility, a ruthless assault team storms the compound searching for someone their boss has lost. Walker begrudgingly falls in with skilled hitwoman Elda and her mysterious ward Juliet in order to survive the night.

A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.

In order to save the man she loves from jail, Mathilde takes his place by helping his break-out. While she exclusively relies on him to survive in this prison setting, Mathilde has not heard from him since her imprisonment. Isolated, with her son as her only support, she is now identified by the inmate number 383205-B. Will Mathilde become a convict like any other one?

The Belgian PM is abducted and he finds his wife and children taken hostage. If he wants to see them again – alive – he has to kill the person he is meeting later that day. And that person is no less than... the president of the United States.

Three war-torn strangers posing as a family flee Sri Lanka’s civil war to start over in a troubled Paris suburb, but their past traumas resurface as they struggle to survive in their new environment.

In their new overseas home, an American family soon finds themselves caught in the middle of a coup, and they frantically look for a safe escape in an environment where foreigners are being immediately executed.

An employee at the French Embassy in Bangkok invites his wife to join him – and enjoy the benefits of their open marriage.

In a remote, isolated Lebanese village surrounded by land mines, Muslims and Christians live together in peace. As civil strife starts to engulf the country around them, the women in the village try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark by sabotaging the village radio, and then destroying the village TV.

A big-game hunter for zoos books passage on a Greek shipping freighter with a fresh haul of exotic and deadly animals from the Amazon, including a rare white Jaguar – along with a political assassin being extradited to the U.S in secret. Two days into the journey, the assassin escapes and releases the captive animals, throwing the ship into chaos.

A beautiful felon, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a policeman, is given a second chance – as a secret political assassin controlled by the government.

When he and his pregnant wife are attacked in their home, a former elite agent becomes trapped in a deadly manhunt tied to his own painful past.

During the United States' 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, a group of female soldiers posing as medical relief are sent back in to rescue a group of kidnapped teenagers caught between ISIS and the Taliban.

After the G20 Summit is overtaken by terrorists, President Danielle Sutton must bring all her statecraft and military experience to defend her family and her fellow leaders.

To escape her abusive boyfriend, Kat joins a wilderness expedition with a group of women, all of whom are struggling with the uncertainty of life. What was supposed to be an opportunity for personal discovery quickly becomes a fight for survival, forcing each one to discover the strength within themselves that they didn't even know they possessed. While being brazenly chased by a pack of predators, the strong quickly set themselves apart from the weak. In a battle of will, stamina, and heart, these very virtues present themselves at the most crucial moment. With death looming, each is left with what is truly important - the strength within oneself.

When a notorious gang of bikers recruits her brother for a heist, a former motocross champion must face her deepest fears to keep her family safe.

Desperate to break free from the poverty of his homeland, Elias boards a ramshackle people-smuggling trawler to France. But when the boat is raided by police, Elias leaps into the ocean, eventually finding himself washed up on a Mediterranean beach resort called Eden. So begins Elias odyssesy across Western Europe to Paris, where wondrous promise, helpful new friends and perilous dangers await him every step of the way.

After his mission is exposed, an undercover CIA operative stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan must fight his way out, alongside his Afghan translator, to an extraction point in Kandahar, all whilst avoiding elite enemy forces and foreign spies tasked with hunting them down.

A gang of young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election, only to hole up at an Inn run by neo-Nazis.

A hardened gun-for-hire's latest mission becomes a soul-searching race to survive when he's sent into Bangladesh to rescue a drug lord's kidnapped son.

Two years after a burn-out, Duval is still unemployed. Contacted by an enigmatic businessman, he is offered a simple and well-paid job: transcribing telephone tapping. Duval accepts financially without questioning the purpose of the organization that employs him. Precipitated at the heart of a political plot, he must face the brutal mechanics of the underground world of the secret services.

A group of Malayali nurses stranded in Iraq, must survive their capture by the extremists and reach out to the rescue team headed by the Indian government.

A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

From his offices in Switzerland, Russian Igor Lipovsky is engaged in a vast and profitable gunrunning operation with Africa. The French government wants to hinder the activities of the arms dealer and sends a team to sink one of his ships heading for Angola with a load of illegal weaponry. Lisa, Brisseau, Loïc, Tony and Raymond are professionals: they carefully set up their cover, plan all their moves meticulously, and carry out orders without asking questions. Perhaps they should. The code-name of the mission is "Janus"; and just like with the ancient deity, there are two opposite faces for every aspect of the operation: the objective of the French government, the role of each team member, the presumed friend and the assumed foe...

A rich industrialist is brutally kidnapped. While he physically and mentally degenerates in imprisonment, the kidnappers, police and the board of the company of which he is director negotiate about the ransom of 50 million euro.

Mélanie, 16 years old, lives with her mother. She likes going to school, her friends, playing the cello, and she wants to change the world. But when she meets a boy on the Internet and falls in love with him, her world changes as she is gradually recruited by Daesh. Sonia is 17 years old, and she almost did something irrevocable to “guarantee” her family a place in paradise. These teenage girls might be called Anaïs, Manon or Leila, and one day they all might go some way down the recruitment process. But can they ever come back from it?

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

11 years ago, inspector Malik couldn’t solve a kidnapping case and a little girl died. Now with only a few days before the crime gets classified, he decides to reopen the case. Malik owes it to the mother and to himself. As he digs into the past, a child is kidnapped again. The pattern is the same one as a decade ago, it’s no coincidence. Malik knows he has a few days to make things right and to bring justice.

In a desperate bid to reunite with his daughter, an armed man bursts into the medical center where his estranged wife works and kidnaps her.

Seeking justice for his partner’s murder by an ISIS member, a Copenhagen police officer finds himself caught in a cat and mouse game with a duplicitous CIA agent who is using the killer as a pawn to trap other ISIS members.

During a heat wave, strange clouds start pouring down acid rain, wreaking devastation and panic throughout France. In a world teetering on the edge, a girl and her divorced parents must join forces to confront and try to escape this climate catastrophe.

