Sympathetic terrorist docudrama sparks talk
'Hamburg Cell' causes a buzz
Even before its Aug. 25 Edinburgh Film Festival premiere, Channel 4's "The Hamburg Cell," an empathetic portrait of the underground cell that provided three of the four Sept. 11 pilots, is fast becoming the most talked-about pic in town.
The filmmakers go to some lengths to humanize the conspirators, and the pic is likely to be branded "too sympathetic" by some commentators.
HBO had initially pledged to fund the fictionalized docudrama but pulled the plug a year ago. According to executive producer David Aukin, whose Mentorn production company brought the idea to Channel 4, the setback was understandable but disappointing. "Editorially we were getting huge encouragement from HBO, but more cautious types higher up the food chain decided the U.S. public was not ready for this story to be told, which was fair enough at the time."
For producer Finola Dwyer, the challenge of making such a politically charged pic was "that given the incredibly sensitive material, it was always clear no one was going to open their wallets wide. Shooting on film in the U.K., Germany and the U.S. with a cast predominantly from the Middle East on a £2 million ($3.6 million) budget was highly ambitious."
Scribe Ronan Bennett was attracted by the project's daring to tell the story from the point of view of the terrorists: "The actions of these men have changed the course of history, and yet they remain for most of us little more than ciphers," he says.
The story focuses on Ziad Jarrah's transition from feckless student to Islamic ideologue, jihadist and hijacker of Flight 93.
At first Jarrah is more average student than god-fearing Muslim; he knocks back wine over dinner with his Turkish girlfriend and they sleep together. But Jarrah is lonely and impressionable and soon falls in with radical Islamists, including Mohamed Atta, who are convinced that a new worldwide Holocaust against Muslims is going on unreported.
The thesp who took the risk of playing Jarrah is 26-year-old newcomer Karim Saleh, but it was not after some soul-searching that he agreed to the part. As he explains to Variety, "This is now my second part as a fanatic Muslim, but being a professional film terrorist is not all I want to do."
"Cell" shows on Channel 4 Sept. 2 but looks ready to travel as well. Offers for U.S. rights are in discussion, and more distribs will see the pic at its special Venice screening.
