13 days 13 nights: Roschdy Zem in the emergency of Kabul (critic)

Kabul, August 2021. Martin Bourboulon plunged his camera in the last days before the fall of the Afghan capital. With Roschdy Zem by ordering trapped in history.

Kabul, August 2021. The Taliban storm the Afghan capital and history has just changed. In thirteen days. This is the moment that Martin Bourboulon Choose to dive his camera into this whirlwind and explore this bloody parenthesis with the instinct of a war reporter and the baroud artifying a Hollywood film. Funny routes for the one who had accustomed us to the marital fadies of Dad or momto golden splendids ofEiffel or to twirling fights of Three musketeers.

With 13 days, 13 nightshe changes brass. No more costume machines or family comedies: the filmmaker adapts the autobiographical work of Commander Mohamed Bida and plunges into the real burning. Besides, from the start, we think of the films of Paul Greengrass (United 93,, Green Zone) or the madness of a Ridley Scott (The fall of the black hawk) Precisely for this way of transforming the hottest news in cinematographic matters. We also think of Zero Dark Thirtybecause the epic of Bida recalls the strange odyssey of Maya, who sank into darkness at the risk of getting lost (and if the two films end on the same level it is probably not by chance).

But where Greengrass favored documentary chaos, where Scott intended to redefine the war film, Bourboulon opted for a more classic approach, more French too. Roschdy Zem So embodies Commander Mohamed Bida, a man who trapped history who must negotiate with the Taliban to organize the evacuation of the French Embassy. By his side, Lyna Khoudri Play Eva, a young Franco -Afghane humanitarian – and this casting reveals the director’s intentions basically.

To carry this tragedy in real time, it was indeed necessary an actor capable of embodying authority without ever falling into caricature (military or action). Zem wins here with obviousness. Fabulous in the main role, all in muscle, raw look and intensity, the actor finds this Marmorean presence which was his signature for a long time. After being mulled at Desplechin (Roubaix, a light) and decompose in Zlotowski (The children of others), it comes back to its elementary power, but as fleshed out by a whole lyrical, light … female palette? As if the marble man had learned tenderness without losing anything from his strength. It is in fact the heart of the film, the one on which time flows and time passes. And it is the bet of Bourboulon, to have time which is rolling out a character in its own right. Thirteen days to evacuate refugees to the airport, thirteen days to build a suspense that the news has already resolved. It is in this gap between the collective experience and the singular experience that the issue of the film resides. If the live images allowed us to know everything about the fall of Kabul what remained to film? What BOURBOULON brands its cameras, this intimate dimension: exchanged looks, heavy silences, cold sweat of corridor negotiations. It does not prevent the action scenes from being spectacular, up to Hollywood productions. But it is clearly not the purpose.