‘SPOILER ALERT’

In the middle of a cold rainy night, a van carrying Palestinian prisoners makes its way into a high-security Israeli prison.

We are then introduced to a woman named Layla, when she is pushed inside a cell as an Israeli defense force soldier interrogates her. He asks Layla about giving a young boy a car ride, a boy who is suspected of bombing a military checkpoint.

At first, she feels disoriented since she has been standing for hours with her hands handcuffed to the ceiling. However, she pulls herself together when the soldier slaps her.

This is also the first time that Layla finds out the reason for her arrest. She tells the soldier she does not know the boy, and only wants to help him. Hearing her deny the accusations, the soldier sends her to the prison inspector named Hava.

Without explaining, Hava makes Layla take off all of her jewelry before hosing her down and taking her mugshot.

This marks the first day of Layla being held as a captive in the Israeli prison. Hava then throws her into a cell with several other Israeli prisoners, who immediately gang up on her and try to intimidate her.

Layla spends that night on the floor with her blanket, as the other inmates refuse to give her a bunk.

The next morning, she is woken up by the sound of Hava approaching their cell for roll call. When she looks out of the small window on their cell door, she notices that Hava treats Arab inmates worse.

Once everyone in her cell is accounted for, Layla begs Hava to let her see her husband, but her pleas are ignored.

Sometime later, everyone is let out into the courtyard where Layla once again asks Hava to let her see her husband. Seeing this, another Palestinian inmate named Sanaa asks her if she is trying to cut a deal. Layla ignores her and turns to Hava, who gives in and takes her to the warden.

The warden questions Layla about the boy she had helped again, but Layla gives her the same answer she had given the interrogator.

Then, the warden tells her that she can see her husband if she can be their inside man, and find out how the Palestinian prisoners are sending out messages.

Layla agrees to the conditions and is finally able to see her husband, Farid. To her surprise, Farid tells her that she needs to lie and tell everyone that the boy threatened her with a knife, which is why she had helped him.

He claims that this is the only way for her to get out of prison, or she will be stuck without a trial.

Back in her cell, Layla finds a pencil on the ground and picks it up. Just then, her cellmate, Shulamit comes up behind her and attacks her. She asks Layla for the pencil, but Layla refuses to give it up.

During this, Hava shows up and throws Layla in solitary confinement for getting into a fight.

However, Layla begins to get sick inside and throws up. As a result, she is taken to the medical center where a doctor checks her, and informs her that she is pregnant.

The warden who had also showed up there, tells Layla that she needs to get an abortion because she cannot give birth to a child in prison.

Layla refuses to give an answer at that moment, and she is sent to a different cell for her safety. This cell has two sisters, Fidaa and Jamila, who were arrested while they were in school.

We then are introduced to an older woman named Im Ali, who has two grandsons in prison with her, Rihan, and Sanaa, a freedom fighter from Lebanon who has been in prison for fifteen years.

Rihan is the first one to warm up to Layla, and offers her a bed and water. She introduces everyone to her, but the others remain cautious of her.

In the middle of the night, once all the other prisoners are asleep, her cellmates write letters so that they can send them outside.

In the morning, Layla and the other prisoners are put to work sewing up military uniforms.

Rihan teaches Layla how to work a sewing machine, while Fidaa shows her an embroidered logo of Palestine, as a show of resistance. After this, Layla visits the warden again, who reminds her that she is running out of time to get an abortion.

Layla replies that she cannot do anything without talking to her husband first, who is still unaware of the pregnancy.

The warden tells her to call her husband, but when she breaks the news to Farid, his response makes her question everything. Before she can have a full conversation with him, the warden hangs up the phone.

In exchange for getting her phone call, Layla tells the warden about her cellmates’ letters. She is escorted back to her cell by Hava, who searches their cell for the letters.

To everyone’s horror, she ends up finding them under Jamila’s mattress, and takes her to solitary confinement where she is later tortured for hours.

As everyone watches Jamila getting taken away, Sanaa figures out that it was Layla who had told the warden about their letters, and threatens to kill her with a broken piece of glass.

But Layla manages to snatch the glass, cutting herself in the process, and screams at her cellmates to leave her alone.

Once again, Layla finds herself in the medical center where she is treated by a Palestinian doctor named Ayman, who is also a prisoner. He stitches up her wound and then tries to feed her, but she refuses to eat.

The next day, Layla watches from her cell as more prisoners are brought into the prison every day. One day, a fight breaks out between Sanaa and another Israeli prisoner named Shira, in the prison cafeteria.

Everyone gets caught in between this, until Hava shows up and threatens to kill Sanaa. When Layla finds herself alone with Rihan, she wonders how she is going to give birth in a prison where her child’s life will be in danger every day.

Rihan tells Layla to stay away from both Sanaa and Shira, or she will continue to get dragged into their messes.

A few days later, Layla’s mother visits her in prison along with her lawyer, Rachel. She had been trying to get bail for Layla, which had been denied.

Then, as her case goes to trial, Rachel argues that Layla had just gotten married and is now pregnant, which is why she would never put her child’s life at risk.

Just then, the judge calls the child she had helped, into the courtroom, and asks Layla if he had threatened her, or forced her to help him. Everyone watches her, waiting for her to blame the boy, but when she sees that he is covered in bruises, she refuses to inflict any more harm on him.

She testifies that the boy had not forced her to do anything, which is why she gets sentenced to eight years in prison.

The next morning, Farid visits Layla again and informs her that he has been given forty-eight hours to leave their house. He reminds her that their visa for Canada is expiring, and he has to leave.

Farid explains that he wants to get settled there until Layla gets out of prison. He then urges her to abort the baby since she is going to be stuck in prison for the next eight years.

Angry, Layla refuses to abort their baby, and tells him to leave if he wants to. Several months go by, and Layla approaches the end of her pregnancy. At this point, she gets along with the rest of her cellmates, and manages to bond with all of them. She even receives letters from her students that she used to teach.

At the same time, Rachel visits the warden with books for Layla and her cellmates. The warden reminds Rachel of the fact that the prisoners she is defending, are also the ones who are responsible for her son’s death. But this does not sit well with Rachel, and she storms out of the warden’s office.

One day, while everyone is in the courtyard, Layla notices Sanaa passing letters to the men’s side of the prison through a hole in the wall.

Despite her deal with the warden, she chooses to stay silent. She even chooses to ignore Jamila and Fidaa climbing through the fence to look at Im Ali’s grandsons.

While the girls are busy talking to Im Ali, Layla notices an unconscious Shulamit on the ground. At first, she hesitates to help, but then calls out for help.

Days go by with Layla adjusting to her new reality, until contractions hit her in the middle of the day. She is rushed to the medical center where she is handcuffed to the bed, and she gives birth to a baby boy.

She names him Nour, and introduces him to her cellmates and they celebrate his arrival.

The next morning, Layla’s mother visits her at the prison, and sees her grandson for the first time. She tries to hand Layla new clothes for Nour, but Hava tells her that it is forbidden for outsiders to send anything inside the prison.

Then, her mother reveals that their appeals for her release have also been rejected, and reminds her daughter that she needs to be strong for Nour, since she is now not alone.

To Layla’s relief, she is allowed to keep Nour with her, and he gets to grow up among the prisoners. Even Sanaa, who had stayed away from Layla and Nour, starts to grow close to the small boy.

One morning, Layla takes Nour to the medical center after Nour falls sick. As she waits, she notices Shulamit in the bed next to her.

She asks Layla why she had saved her, and Layla replies that she could not have left her to die.

They don’t get enough time to finish their conversation because the doctor walks in. He tells her that Nour has a fever, and sends her back to the cell with his medication. However, later that night, Nour’s condition begins to worsen, and Layla finds herself back in the medical center.

This time, instead of the doctor, she meets Ayman who gives her a wooden ornament as a gift for Nour, since it is his birthday. Once she gets back to her cell, everyone celebrates Nour’s birthday, because they haven’t celebrated yet, and sings Arabic songs for him.

That night during dinner, Sanaa hears about the Israeli attacks in Lebanon that had left several people injured.

Just then, Hava walks in and turns the television off. When Sanaa asks her to turn it back on, so that she can see what is happening outside, Shira begins mocking her.

A fight breaks out between the two of them and as usual, Sanaa receives a beating from Hava. Fed up with the mistreatment of the Palestinian prisoners, Sanaa and the rest of their cellmates decide to go on a hunger strike.

In the morning, Hava arrives outside for roll call, only to find that the Palestinian prisoners are refusing to get up.

Fidaa walks up to her and shows her the demands that they had written on their palms, claiming that they refuse to make food. Even though Hava is angry, she has no choice but to leave the prisoners alone.

With the Palestinian prisoners refusing to cook, the Israeli prisoners are made to work.

One day, while cleaning the warden’s office, Shulamit steals a newspaper and gives it to Layla. They discover that the attacks in Lebanon have intensified, and during one of the attacks, Sanaa’s family was killed.

That night, the prisoners light up fires, and hold them out as a sign of their protest.

Seeing this, the warden orders Layla to be placed into solitary confinement along with Nour. There, she tells Layla that Nour is almost two, which means that he can be taken away, if she does not stop participating in the strike.

The warden’s threats don’t change her time, and Layla spends several days in solitary confinement until Shulamit delivers a letter for her.

The letter had been sent by Ayman, who informed her that the male prisoners had heard about the strike, and were now on a hunger strike as well. Before leaving, Shulamit also tells Layla that she will not be able to help her any longer, as she is getting released soon.

A few days later, as the strike continues, Rihan is thrown into solitary confinement with Layla. She reveals that the warden is no longer allowing her to see her children.

As Rihan begins to cry, she claims that Sanaa has dragged them into her strike, but no one should judge mothers for thinking about their children first. Convinced, both Rihan and Layla break their strike.

Due to this, Layla is allowed to have visitors. One day, Farid shows up at the prison, and tries to convince Layla to give Nour up and send him to Canada with him. However, Layla refuses to budge and sends Farid away.

In her cell, Layla uses a piece of broken mirror to see what is going on outside.

To her surprise, she finds Rihan smoking with the prison guards outside. This is when she realizes that Rihan is an informant for the warden.

Layla then announces that she is back on her strike, and confronts Rihan about snitching on their cellmates, but Rihan does not regret it and reveals that the warden is going to release her soon.

Meanwhile, in Layla’s old cell, Sanaa and the rest of the prisoners write a message on fabric and hang it outside their cells.

This draws the attention of all the male prisoners as well as the warden. All of them are pushed out into the courtyard, where Layla finds the opportunity to tell Sanaa about Rihan’s betrayal.

Hearing this, a fight breaks out between them, but as their cellmates try to break them apart, a prison guard fires his gun, shooting Jamila in the stomach. Fidaa holds her dead sister, and watches as she is dragged away.

Now more than ever, the prisoners are even more motivated to see justice served, and manage to lock themselves inside the prison building, leaving the guards outside.

On the other hand, the male prisoners begin chanting Palestinian slogans, as well to back up the women.

While the warden works with soldiers to tame the situation, Shulamit breaks into her office again and calls Rachel.

At the same time, the soldiers use gas to break into the prison, but despite this, the prisoners continue to bang cups and sticks on the floor to show their resistance.

The next day, Rachel shows up at the prison with a court order to see Layla, and reminds the warden that she is using the same tactics that Hitler had used against Jews.

In the medical bay, Ayman leaves a message for an unconscious Layla, informing her that the resistance has captured six soldiers, and is demanding the release of all prisoners.

Shackled to the bed, Layla reads his letter where he promises to wait for her to get out.

A few weeks later, the warden finally gives in to the demands and agrees to exchange a few prisoners for the captured soldiers.

Im Ali and Sanaa are among the selected prisoners, however, Layla’s name is nowhere on the list.

She watches as the prisoners leave, and bids them goodbye.

Years later, after the completion of her eight-year sentence, Layla is able to walk out of the prison.

Then, she reunites with Nour, who has been living with his grandmother.

Since the year 1948, over seven hundred thousand Palestinians have been wrongfully detained in Israeli prisons.

Today, in 2023, and in less than 45 days, over 14 thousand lives were lost because of Israeli airstrikes, with more than 6000 of them being children.

And over seven thousand people like Layla, have been detained in Israeli prisons.

3000 Nights.