Zabou Breitman gives a harrowing performance as a mother trying to save her kidnapped son in Alexandre Arcady’s 24 DAYS
24 DAYS (24 JOURS) (Alexandre Arcady, 2014)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Friday, April 24
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.menemshafilms.com/24-days
On Friday night, January 20, 2006, shortly after having Shabbat dinner with his family, twenty-three-year-old cell-phone salesman Ilan Halimi was kidnapped in Sceaux, and the perpetrators demanded 450,000 Euros as ransom. What happened over the next twenty-four days eventually shocked France and the rest of the world as the details of the abduction, and its frightening anti-Semitic roots, were made public. Director Alexandre Arcady tells the harrowing true story in 24 Days, a gripping procedural that follows the Halimi family and the police as they try to save Ilan’s (Syrus Shahidi) life and find what became known as the Gang of Barbarians, led by Ivory Coast native Youssouf “Django” Fofana (Tony Harrison). Zabou Breitman gives a powerful performance as Ruth Halimi, Ilan’s mother, who quickly grows unhappy with the police’s plan, which involves her ex-husband and Ilan’s father, Didier (Pascal Elbé), challenging Django over the course of hundreds of phone calls, aided by Commander Delcour (Jacques Gamblin) and police psychologist Brigitte Farrell (Sylvie Testud). With time running out and the police refusing to acknowledge the situation as a hate crime, the family becomes even more desperate, leading to a chilling conclusion.
A family waits for news in 24 DAYS, based on a true story that gripped France
Based on Ruth Halimi and Émilie Frèche’s book, the film, cowritten by Frèche, Antoine Lacomblez, and Arcady (Last Summer in Tangiers, Le Grand Carnaval), evokes such kidnapping thrillers as Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, except here it’s all true; Arcady even shot much of 24 Days in the actual locations where the events happened, including the real police precinct where the Halimis spent much of those twenty-four days. Elbé (The Other Son, Tête de Turc) is terrific as the father, who tries to keep his cool as he deals with Django, an emotionally volatile and unpredictable criminal. The film is particularly relevant given the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe; in a press-kit interview, Elbé states, “When we see [Dieudonné] M’Bala M’Bala nostalgic for [Philippe] Pétain and the young people who take to the streets and cry pre-war slogans, we realize that we in France have learned nothing from history. I am appalled by the feebleness of the reaction provoked by the ideas of people like Dieudonné and the deafening silence of some artists. Truly, something has gone very wrong in our society.” Arcady’s chilling film is evidence that something indeed has gone very wrong.
(T)error is a great name for a horror movie, but even though it turns out that Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s debut is not part of that genre, there still is plenty scary about it. Winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Break Out First Feature at Sundance, (T)error is a surprising look inside one aspect of the FBI’s counterterrorism program. Shortly after Saeed “Shariff” Torres, a friend and neighbor of filmmaker and photojournalist Cabral’s, suddenly disappeared, he contacted her, eventually letting her inside his secret career as a longtime FBI informant. A Muslim and former Black Panther revolutionary, the sixty-three-year-old school kitchen employee and father of a young son goes on camera as he takes on what he claims will be his final assignment, cozying up to a Pittsburgh man named Khalifa Ali Al-Akili, previously known as James Marvin Thomas Jr., who the FBI thinks might be involved in terrorist plots. It’s not exactly the most thrilling game of cat and mouse; Cabral and codirector Sutcliffe (Adama) follow Shariff as he goes about a lot of mundane business, arguing over how much money the FBI gave him, text-messaging back and forth with agents and his prey, examining Facebook pages, and Skyping with his son, whose face is blurred for protection. And Sharrif is not quite the kind of well-trained operative you read about in books or see in action-packed movies, making one wonder just what the FBI is thinking — and how it’s spending our money — especially after a major twist occurs about halfway through the film, turning everything around and inside out, providing a new vantage point that makes the whole sting operation even more bizarre and surreal. But it’s all too real, and rather frightening in its own very strange way. (T)error is screening April 21, 23, and 24 at the Tribeca Film Festival, with the filmmakers participating in Q&As after all three shows.
