The Hamburg Cell
Synopsis
"When the world talks about the men who carried out this holy operation they will be talking about the men who changed the course of history," exclaims a senior Al Qaeda member in this fictional docu-drama from director Antonia Bird. Charting the planning and execution of the World Trade Center attacks by a handful of Muslim fundamentalists led by Mohamed Atta (Kamel), The Hamburg Cell is a devastatingly powerful work that puts faces and personalities to the men who carried out the attacks against the US on the fateful morning of September 11th.
Based on a wide range of documentary evidence, from court transcriptions to video footage, this simmering yet understated little movie focuses on Lebanese student Ziad Jarrah (Saleh) as he's transformed from rich-boy student at the University of Applied Science in Hamburg to jihadist hijacker of United Airlines flight 93 (which crashed en route to the White House shortly after simultaneous attacks struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon).
It's a difficult journey. Immersing us in the secretive, clandestine world of these fundamentalists as they indoctrinate new recruits, train at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and learn to fly at an aviation school in Florida, Bird forces a disturbing intimacy with men destined to become mass murderers.
Details
- Year
- 2005
- Type of film
- Features
- Running Time
- 100 mins
- Format
- S16mm
- Director
- Antonia Bird
- Producer
- David Aukin, George Carey
- Co-Producer
- David Aukin, George Carey
- Editor
- St John O' Rourke
- Screenwriter
- Ronan Bennett
- Director of Photography
- Florian Hoffmeister
- Sound
- Tim Albarn
- Music
- Adrian Maral
- Principal Cast
- Karim Saleh, Agni Tsangaridou, Omar Berdouni, Adnan Marai
Genre
Production status
Complete
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Last updated 7th September 2006
