REBEL
Genre
Action, Drama and Thriller
Running time
135 minutes
Year
2022
Language
Arabic and French
Country
Belgium, Luxembourg and France
Director
Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah
Bio
Producer
Bert Hamelinck, Dimitri Verbeek, Robin Kerremans
Cast
Amir El Arbi, Aboubakr Bensaihi, Lubna Azabal, Tara Abboud, Younes Bouab
Scriptwriter
Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah
Belgian-Moroccan directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah bring the action movie techniques and energy of their previous film, Bad Boys for Life, to the story of two brothers from Belgium who join ISIS. Idealistic Kamal (Aboubakr Bensaihi) goes to Syria aiming to pull people out of collapsed buildings and film Assad’s barbarities. His mother, Leila (Lubna Azabel), is aghast when she sees him in a propaganda video holding a gun to a hostage’s head. Younger brother Nassim (Amire El Arbi), who has always worshipped his big brother, becomes ripe for recruitment. Politically charged as this story is, the Adil-Bilal duo focus on keeping the pace fast, the twists frequent, the heroes and villains unambiguous and the style pitched well above naturalism. There are even a couple of numbers where the terrorists burst into song. Along the way, their real contention is clear: to show how it is that good people can find themselves doing terrible things.
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