Infiltration comes with a lot of conditions, and not just from the mission’s Pov. To earn trust is to be emotionally involved, even if a little bit, and thus to be a bit vulnerable too. It is where the line is drawn between being involved and being vulnerable that proves the ability of the infiltrator. On top of that, sometimes, the truth that stares us in the face is far from the truth that was expected. This is where guilt kicks in, followed by rage. While we may wonder if guilt and rage are enough to make an infiltrator go rogue, it depends on how the infiltrator handles both truths. With these things in mind, let’s begin our conversation on Netflix’s crime thriller Aka.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘Aka’?
The Etoile Hotel in France is blown up by a terrorist cell led by Sudanese warlord Moktar Al Tayeb.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘Aka’?
The Etoile Hotel in France is blown up by a terrorist cell led by Sudanese warlord Moktar Al Tayeb.
- 4/30/2023
- by Shubhabrata Dutta
- Film Fugitives
It’s always tempting to fetishize single-shot sequences — to look for visible seams in their making, to wonder how many times it took to nail the final take, to get caught up in the meticulous, Milton Bradley’s Mouse Trap choreography of it all. Some are great, some are merely show-offy, and others go from bravura to self-indulgent simply by outstaying their welcome by 30 seconds. It’s usually just look-ma-no-cuts razzle dazzle, a bit of filmmaking virtuosity designed to have viewers wondering, “How did they do that?” The more pertinent question,...
- 9/8/2022
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Romain Gavras’ immersive modern tragedy Athena just had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, receiving a 4 1/2-minute standing ovation in the process.
The French film had people applauding and whooping from the start of the end credits before the crowd stood for the ovation.
The kinetic story begins just after the death of a young boy, in unexplained circumstances, throwing his three brothers and the whole of the eponymous Athena housing project outside Paris into chaos.
Venice Film Festival Photo Gallery: Chalamet, Blanchett, Iñárritu & More
In a star-making turn, Dali Benssalah plays Abdel, a soldier in the French army who is called back from the frontline after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, and finds his family torn apart. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), he...
The French film had people applauding and whooping from the start of the end credits before the crowd stood for the ovation.
The kinetic story begins just after the death of a young boy, in unexplained circumstances, throwing his three brothers and the whole of the eponymous Athena housing project outside Paris into chaos.
Venice Film Festival Photo Gallery: Chalamet, Blanchett, Iñárritu & More
In a star-making turn, Dali Benssalah plays Abdel, a soldier in the French army who is called back from the frontline after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, and finds his family torn apart. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), he...
- 9/2/2022
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Designed as something akin to a Greek tragedy for today’s moment, Venice Film Festival Competition title Athena is a torrent, an inundation, a cascade of rage, fury and frustration over the realities of life for a particular group of French families. Such conditions exist in most societies, some more dire than others, but here the wages of pent-up anger are presented with a single-minded intensity and extended duration that would be hard to exceed.
Following in the powerful wake of the 2019 Oscar-nominated sensation Les Misérables, which was also set in a teeming eastern suburb of Paris rarely seen by outsiders, director Romain Gavras and his co-writers Elias Belkeddar and Les Misérables director Ladj Ly use undiluted adrenalin and immersive you-are-there camerawork to plunge you into the middle of a classical drama for modern times. The Netflix-backed film grabs you by the throat and barely allows you a moment for a gasp of air.
Following in the powerful wake of the 2019 Oscar-nominated sensation Les Misérables, which was also set in a teeming eastern suburb of Paris rarely seen by outsiders, director Romain Gavras and his co-writers Elias Belkeddar and Les Misérables director Ladj Ly use undiluted adrenalin and immersive you-are-there camerawork to plunge you into the middle of a classical drama for modern times. The Netflix-backed film grabs you by the throat and barely allows you a moment for a gasp of air.
- 9/2/2022
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Pardon my French, but the first shot of Romain Gavras’ “Athena” — a sketch of a Greek tragedy transplanted into a housing project on the outskirts of Paris — is absolutely fucking insane. Even in a digital age where dazzling long-takes have become a dime a dozen (and all too easy to fake), the oner that ignites this roman candle of a movie about a police siege on a poor neighborhood is something else. It stands out for its fiery violence, for the ground that it covers, and for the incandescent energy that explodes off the screen like the molotov cocktail that Karim (Sami Slimane) hurls into a crowd of cops and reporters who’ve gathered for a press conference at the local precinct.
The news of the day is personal for the young agitator: Karim’s 13-year-old brother has been murdered, and a video of police officers beating him to death has gone viral.
The news of the day is personal for the young agitator: Karim’s 13-year-old brother has been murdered, and a video of police officers beating him to death has gone viral.
- 9/2/2022
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Venice film festival: A staggeringly good opening set piece is the high point of Romain Gavras’s gritty thriller about police racism
Romain Gavras’s new drama-thriller is about racism, violence and injustice in the Paris banlieues – broadly in the tradition of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables. It’s spectacular and immersive, with a sensational opening. But it gets bogged down in its own one-note, one-tempo uproar and open-ended parkour camerawork – impressive though that is – and suffers from a number of sneaky false-flag get-out clauses that feel like a cop-out.
It tells the story of four brothers of Algerian origin in the same tough Athena housing estate. Idir has just been killed by a bunch of cops – or guys in cop uniforms – for daring to talk back, an atrocity captured on a viral video. Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is a decorated army hero, Moktar (Ouassini Embarek...
Romain Gavras’s new drama-thriller is about racism, violence and injustice in the Paris banlieues – broadly in the tradition of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables. It’s spectacular and immersive, with a sensational opening. But it gets bogged down in its own one-note, one-tempo uproar and open-ended parkour camerawork – impressive though that is – and suffers from a number of sneaky false-flag get-out clauses that feel like a cop-out.
It tells the story of four brothers of Algerian origin in the same tough Athena housing estate. Idir has just been killed by a bunch of cops – or guys in cop uniforms – for daring to talk back, an atrocity captured on a viral video. Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is a decorated army hero, Moktar (Ouassini Embarek...
- 9/2/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
There is no Athena housing project in Paris. That’s a name invented by “Athena” director Romain Gavras and partner in crime Ladj Ly for the banlieu apartment block that becomes a kind of makeshift fortress in an epic standoff between residents — first- and second-generation Black and Arab immigrants tired of being mistreated — and the French national police. Naming it thus lends what unfolds there a classical resonance, one that ties Gavras’ astonishing third feature to the tradition of Greek tragedy, though the situation could hardly be more timely.
“Athena” tells the story of four brothers, one murdered on camera by a group of unidentified men in police uniforms, the three others torn about what to do next. Who were these assailants, shown stomping an innocent 13-year-old to death? Why does the French police seem to be protecting the culprits? And what will it take to obtain justice?
These questions...
“Athena” tells the story of four brothers, one murdered on camera by a group of unidentified men in police uniforms, the three others torn about what to do next. Who were these assailants, shown stomping an innocent 13-year-old to death? Why does the French police seem to be protecting the culprits? And what will it take to obtain justice?
These questions...
- 9/2/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
With his incendiary 2019 debut feature, Les Misérables, director Ladj Ly brought the urban unrest, the police brutality and the festering social and racial inequality of the Paris banlieue drama La Haine hurtling into the 21st century, its belly aflame with righteous anger and indignation. Ly serves as a writer and producer on Romain Gavras’ Athena, which is both a companion piece to those films and a thundering amplification of their themes. Where the earlier works built to stunning crescendos of violence, Athena is a live grenade, beginning in full ignition mode and dialing up its intensity throughout with virtuoso technique.
That latter factor will surprise no one familiar with the output of Gavras, son of renowned Greek director Costa-Gavras, who made a mark with his dynamic music videos for artists including Kanye West, Jay-Z and M.I.A. His third feature is a...
With his incendiary 2019 debut feature, Les Misérables, director Ladj Ly brought the urban unrest, the police brutality and the festering social and racial inequality of the Paris banlieue drama La Haine hurtling into the 21st century, its belly aflame with righteous anger and indignation. Ly serves as a writer and producer on Romain Gavras’ Athena, which is both a companion piece to those films and a thundering amplification of their themes. Where the earlier works built to stunning crescendos of violence, Athena is a live grenade, beginning in full ignition mode and dialing up its intensity throughout with virtuoso technique.
That latter factor will surprise no one familiar with the output of Gavras, son of renowned Greek director Costa-Gavras, who made a mark with his dynamic music videos for artists including Kanye West, Jay-Z and M.I.A. His third feature is a...
- 9/2/2022
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Netflix has released a new trailer for “Athena,” the latest film from Romain Gavras which will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival and hit streaming on Sept. 23.
Described as a modern Greek tragedy, “Athena” follows a French soldier named Abdel (Dali Benssalah) who is called back from the frontline after his youngest brother, still a child, is killed in an alleged police altercation. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), Abdel struggling to calm the rising tensions as Karim leads the town’s youth in a revolt against the police, turning their community into a fortress under siege.
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‘Purple Hearts’ Enters Netflix All-Time Films List, Passing ‘The Irishman’ and ‘The Unforgivable’
Gavras, who the music video for Jay-Z and Ye’s “No Church in the Wild,” directed and produced the film.
Described as a modern Greek tragedy, “Athena” follows a French soldier named Abdel (Dali Benssalah) who is called back from the frontline after his youngest brother, still a child, is killed in an alleged police altercation. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), Abdel struggling to calm the rising tensions as Karim leads the town’s youth in a revolt against the police, turning their community into a fortress under siege.
Also Read:
‘Purple Hearts’ Enters Netflix All-Time Films List, Passing ‘The Irishman’ and ‘The Unforgivable’
Gavras, who the music video for Jay-Z and Ye’s “No Church in the Wild,” directed and produced the film.
- 8/24/2022
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
Justice will be served as anarchy erupts following a murder at the hands of a rogue police officer.
Romain Gavras’ “Athena” tells an all-too-timely tale of cop corruption, militant protests, and the intersection between nationalism and personal duty. The film premieres at the 2022 Venice Film Festival on September 2, followed by a September 23 Netflix release.
Per the official synopsis, after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is called back from the frontline to find his family torn apart. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), he struggles to calm the rising tensions. As the situation escalates, their community Athena is transformed into a fortress under siege, becoming a scene of tragedy for both the family and beyond.
Gavras directed, produced, and co-wrote the feature along with Ladj Ly...
Romain Gavras’ “Athena” tells an all-too-timely tale of cop corruption, militant protests, and the intersection between nationalism and personal duty. The film premieres at the 2022 Venice Film Festival on September 2, followed by a September 23 Netflix release.
Per the official synopsis, after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is called back from the frontline to find his family torn apart. Caught between his younger brother Karim’s (Sami Slimane) desire for revenge and the criminal dealings of his older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), he struggles to calm the rising tensions. As the situation escalates, their community Athena is transformed into a fortress under siege, becoming a scene of tragedy for both the family and beyond.
Gavras directed, produced, and co-wrote the feature along with Ladj Ly...
- 8/24/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Exclusive: Romain Gavras’ Athena will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, and we’ve got a first-look at the trailer for the immersive modern tragedy from Netflix — check it out above. Following Athena’s Lido bow, it will be released globally on Netflix September 23.
Athena is the third feature from Gavras, here teaming with previous collaborator Elias Belkeddar and longtime friend Ladj Ly (Les Misérables) on writing duties. Ly and Gavras are also producers.
The story begins just after the death of a young boy, in unexplained circumstances, throwing his three brothers and the whole of the eponymous Athena housing project outside Paris into chaos.
In a star-making turn, Dali Benssalah plays Abdel, a soldier in the French army who is called back from the frontline after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, and finds his family torn apart. Caught...
Athena is the third feature from Gavras, here teaming with previous collaborator Elias Belkeddar and longtime friend Ladj Ly (Les Misérables) on writing duties. Ly and Gavras are also producers.
The story begins just after the death of a young boy, in unexplained circumstances, throwing his three brothers and the whole of the eponymous Athena housing project outside Paris into chaos.
In a star-making turn, Dali Benssalah plays Abdel, a soldier in the French army who is called back from the frontline after the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, and finds his family torn apart. Caught...
- 8/24/2022
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
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