Q&AThu. March 22 with Suzanne Blech, American Distributor
SYNOPSIS Saturday, December 24, 1994.
Four GIA terrorists (Algerian Islamist Group) take an Air France Airbus-300 and its 227 people on board hostage at the Algiers airport. Their intentions are unknown; they are armed and very determined. The terrorists insist their fellow fighters be set free and demand immediate take-off of the plane. Finally, after extensive diplomatic negotiations between the governments of France and Algeria and the execution of three passengers, the plane takes off and lands in Marseille at 3:33 AM on Monday, December 26.
Three characters, Thierry, a soldier with GIGN (the French SWAT team), Carole Jeanton, an ambitious technocrat, and Yahia Abdalla are central to the plot. Witnessed by 21 million TV viewers, the SWAT team attack will put an end to this unprecedented hostage taking…..but heralds the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
REVIEWS Libération
JulienLeclercq produces a powerful representation in “The Assault,” successfully turning it into an introspective take on a war film as opposed to an action movie.
Métro
An adrenaline rush that forces us to think.
BIOGRAPHY Director Julien Leclercq began his career in 2004 with the production of the short film Transit, in which he explored a retro-future world populated by half-flesh, half-metal beings. This short film got the attention of the producer Franck Chorot and the Gaumont (a film company), who promptly offered Leclercq a budget of 8.7 million euros to produce his first feature film Chrysalis, the story of a police lieutenant (played by Albert Dupontel) who tries to find his wife’s killer in a Paris of 2025. Leclercq returned to reality to undertake the ambitious project of The Assault, a film about the hijack of the Paris-Algiers flight in December 1994.
