Coming in July on FRONTLINE

A group of Yazidi women demand international help to rescue their relatives abducted by ISIS at a protest in a camp for displaced people in Dohuk, North Iraq.

July 2, 2015

Patrice Taddonio

Before ISIS overran his town in Northern Iraq, Khalil al-Dakhi was a lawyer.

But now, he leads an underground railroad that rescues women and children who have been taken captive by ISIS.

In Escaping ISIS, a hard-hitting new documentary premiering Tuesday, July 14, FRONTLINE delivers a stunning look at the plight of women and children who are Yazidis, a religious minority that have been targeted by ISIS for particularly brutal treatment, and the rescue efforts of al-Dakhi and his team.

“ISIS believes Yazidi women can be enslaved, under their interpretation of Islam,” says FRONTLINE’s Edward Watts, who spent 2 months in Iraq and Turkey filming the documentary and finding undercover footage. “We’ve spoken with some of the first Yazidi women to escape from ISIS, and uncovered accounts that ISIS fighters are raping Yazidi girls as young as nine.”

With ISIS continuing to seize and hold territory in Iraq and Syria, Escaping ISIS is a gripping look inside the group’s brutal reign and its treatment of women. We’ll also publish a series of short documentaries on women and ISIS at facebook.com/frontline in the runup to the July 14 premiere.

Also this month: On July 7, we’ll bring you an encore presentation of Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria, our look at the alarming rise of untreatable, antibiotic-resistant infections.

And on July 21, we’ll premiere Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty, a feature documentary about two filmmakers who set out to interview El Chapo Guzmán, leader of one of the biggest drug cartels in history.

Here’s a closer look at our July lineup: