13 days 13 nights: a high tension film [critique]

Kabul under the bombs and Martin Bourboulon changes gear: from the spectacle in costumes to the hottest geopolitical thriller.

Kabul, August 2021. The Taliban storm the Afghan capital and the story changes in thirteen days. It is this bloody parenthesis, that Martin Bourboulon chronic, with the instinct of a war reporter and Hollywood effects and changes gear. Forgot the twirls of Three musketeers or the splendor ofEiffel : The filmmaker adapts the work of Commander Mohamed Bida and plunges into the most hot reality. We think of Vol 93 or at The fall of the black hawkthis way of transforming hot news into thrilling matters. But in a French version, where we are never afraid of feelings and where classicism would be the surest railing to avoid the traps of the genre (voyeurism or action without tail or head).

For Bourboulon, history is not a pretext, but a tragedy. And to bring it incandescent, it was necessary an actor who weighs. We have it: all in muscle and raw intensity, Roschdy Zem infuses his Marmorean presence of a lyrical perfume. As if the marble man had learned tenderness without losing anything from his strength. By his side, Lyna Khoudri embodies Eva, a Franco-Afghane humanitarian taken between two worlds. But it’s a third character who controls everything. Time. Thirteen days to evacuate refugees to the airport. Thirteen days to unravel a suspense that the news has already resulted.

The exercise consisting in transforming into tension what spectators lived live was perilous, but it is precisely in this gap between collective experience and singular experience that the stake of the film resides. And Bourboulon signs a work which captures with accuracy and vibration the upheavals of the contemporary world.

Of Martin Bourboulon. With Roschdy Zem, Lyna Khoudri, Sidse Babett Knudsen… Duration 1h52. Release on June 27, 2025