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.