ATHENA
| 2022 – 99′ – Drama, Action
Written by Romain Gavras, Ladj Ly, Élias Belkeddar.
Directed by Romain Gavras.
Starring Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti, Karim Lasmi.
Official Selection: Venice International Film Festival.
Official Competition TAFFF 2022.
In French with English subtitles.
A Netflix release.|
Echoes of Ladj Ly’s majestic 2019 Les Miserables (Opening film COLCOA 2019) and Mathieu Kassovitz’s groundbreaking 1995, Hate run through Romain Gavras‘s eagerly-awaited, incendiary modern Greek tragedy, Athena. It all begins with the death of a young boy at the hands of a rogue police officer in the Athena housing projects. The incident tears the boy’s older brothers apart. Karim wants revenge at all costs. Moktar is obsessed by his own drug-dealing activities to even react. Soldier, Abdel, who’s called back from the frontlines, desperately tries to calm rising tensions. But the firestorm escalates, spreading from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, igniting an all-out civil war of brother against brother. Operatic in scope and style, Gavras’s meticulously choreographed and rehearsed elaborate takes — no CGI effects here! — take one’s breath away, deftly sweeping us up in his small story of epic proportions. As Heraclitus warns, “It is difficult to fight anger; for a man will buy revenge with his soul.”