“Trust is the key word,” insists French producer Dimitri Rassam of what it took to put together Martin Bourboulon’s €28m Afghanistan thriller 13 Days, 13 Nights – In The Hell Of Kabul that is making its world premiere out of competition at Cannes on May 23.
The founder of Chapter 2, a Mediawan company, partnered with Pathé Films president Ardavan Safaee to produce the large-scale multi-language thriller set against the backdrop of the 2021 takeover of Kabul by the Taliban as the international military moved out.
The drama is based on the memoir of Commander Mohammed Bida who wrote about how he and his teams along with a young French-Afghan humanitarian worker stopped at nothing to help hundreds of civilians flee the capital city as the Taliban closed in.
Roschdy Zem plays Bida alongside an international cast headlined by Lyna Khoudri and Sidse Babett Knudsen.
The French, English and Arabic-language script was written by Alexandre Smia, with adaptation and dialogue co-written by Bourboulon. Pathé will distribute it in France and is handling international sales.
The film marks Rassam and Safaee’s fourth feature together, having last teamed up for The Count Of Monte-Cristo that also world premiered out of competition at last year’s Cannes film festival and has been a hit at home and abroad with nearly 10 million admissions in France and raking in some $110 million across the globe to date.
They also worked with Bourboulon on The Three Musketeers two- part feature film saga. The development of 13 Days, 13 Nights began during the editing of the second of those films in 2022.
Safaee first read Bida’s book, immediately showed it to Rassam then brought it to Bourboulon, knowing the trio was the right one to bring it to the screen.
“A project like 13 Days, 13 Nights could never have seen the light of day without the mutual trust, collaboration and emulation that has been gradually building over the years,” says Safaee. “ It is a continuous approach vis-a-vis our production teams, technical crews, and our financial partners.”
Canal+ and M6, also partners on their previous films, signed on for the financing packaging, this time with Disney on board too.
“’Seamless’ doesn’t mean effortless. It is never easy to get a movie like this done and we were able to do it because Pathe is willing to take that kind of risk,” Rassam suggests.
Despite its large budget, Safaee clarifies: “Just because we’re making bigger movies doesn’t mean we’re not respectful of the creative visions of the talents we work with. It’s all very collaborative.”
While Bida’s book is not a well-known IP like Alexandre Dumas’ novels, “If you build your line-up based on its marketing category, you’ll never do anything outstanding or build something new,” says Safaee. “The book didn’t fit into a category we’ve seen before, but we felt an urgency to tell this story and we knew we had to make this movie.”
The film includes archival footage of news coverage of the evacuation, clips of the US President Biden speaking, and photos of the real-life characters only during the opening and closing credits.
“We were inspired by Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Clint Eastwood in terms of the directorial style,” Rassam reveals. “ It’s a very intense story about an unsung hero that actually happened, but we also wanted to make an entertaining film.”
International reach
The film shot for 49 days in early summer 2024 in Morocco, mostly on the outskirts of Casablanca and in Rabat, plus Kenitra for airport scenes. The production worked with local outfit Lions Production & Service.
Replicating Kabul in Morocco proved challenging. “It was hard to find extras who closely resembled Afghan crowds, so there was a lot of hair and make-up work to be done.
The team brought on board art designer Stéphane Taillasson for the fourth consecutive collaboratoin and also credit VFX supervisor Olivier Cauwet and his visual effects team at Paris outfit BUF which was able to recreate Kabul and its airport.
Pathe is releasing the film in French cinemas on June 27 before a multi-territorial rollout. “It took a little time for The Count of Monte-Cristo to become an international hit. It all started in Cannes, but didn’t become a hit until six months later. It takes time,” Safaee says.
As for its real-life inspiration “Mohammed Bida told us – ‘I didn’t cry during the entire evacuation in Afghanistan, but I cried when I watched the film’,” Safaee continues
The film is part of Pathe’s international global strategy. “We always take into account that a film has to have an international value to it. We never expect them to just be for French audiences.”
The company is gearing up to move production on English-language feature films back to its Pathe UK office and has already begun recruiting for a team.
Coming next
Next up on thePathe-Chapter 2 partnership slate is Ladj Ly’s Dumas: Black Devil based on the epic destiny of Alexandre Dumas’ father and the first black general of the French army that Chapter 2 produces with Srab Films.
Pathe is also teaming up with Rassam’s new parallel company Yapluka for The Iron King, another IP-based film based on Maurice Druon’s “The Accursed Kings” that will be the English-language debut for The Count of Monte-Cristo directing duo Alexandre de la Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte.
Both producers say they like to challenge themselves with each new project. “There is no formula. When we launched The Three Musketeers, people rolled their eyes and said ‘not another Three Musketeers,’ and when Pathe greenlit The Count of Monte-Cristo, the market was complicated, the industry was still reeling from Covid,” says Rassam.
Plus – he reveals – “the gap financing was €18 million, but they assumed the risk.”
Creative conviction coupled with a heavy amount of risk continues to drive Pathe’s global theatrical strategy. Safaee suggests: “We make movies so they have an impact. The consequence is that they do good business, but first of all, we have to believe in their potential to move audiences everywhere.”
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