THE SEARCHER - LIONESSES

Logline:

A year after her Gardner Museum obsession, Jax hunts smugglers of ISIS-looted antiquities from Iraq's displacement camps to London's auction houses — and discovers that becoming the bait may be the only way to survive.

Opening Scene:

Taghazout, Morocco. "Killer Point" — a notorious surf break where 15-foot waves crash against the shore. While other surfers hesitate, Jax enters the water with only swim fins. She battles through waves choked with ocean plastic.

More About the Film:

A makeshift ambulance screeches into a refugee clinic in Iraq. A bullet-riddled smuggler is rushed to the table. Preparing the body, Jax discovers a 2.5-inch figurine hidden in his clothing. What he was trafficking will get people killed.

An expert reveals its connection to the 5,000-year-old Guennol Lioness, sold at Sotheby's in 2007 for $57 million — and whispers of a legendary lost twin. Within a day, the expert is dead. The smuggler was the first. He won't be the last.

Jax traces the network through Mosul's decimated streets and the Nineveh Plains, where she meets those who resisted ISIS's brutal occupation. She visits the destroyed tomb of Jonah — each site revealing layers of human resilience and loss. ISIS's theatrical destruction of museums? Cover for a quieter crime — selling humanity's oldest treasures to the highest bidder.

In London, she confronts the world's largest black market for looted antiquities. Professor Kingsfield unveils a crucial piece: an anonymous bidder purchased the original Lioness for that record price. As Jax hunts the buyer, the line between hunter and hunted blurs.

When buyers surface, Jax does what she does best. She stops running. She becomes the bait.

"Lionesses" honors the women who stayed to protect their communities when everyone else fled — and became refugees themselves for the trouble.