For the French production, 11.9.01: SEPTEMBER 11, 11 directors from 11 different countries were given a free hand to respond to the attack on America last year with the condition that each contribution lasted exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame. As you\'d expect, the results are wildly variable.
The best comes from Britain\'s Ken Loach, a concise, passionate reminder that, while what happened last September was appalling, it has to be seen in a wider context and that, on September 11, 1973, there was an attack against the democratically elected government of Chile, which was overthrown with the help of the CIA.
Iranian Samira Makhmalbaf takes us to a refugee camp where Afghan children are unable to comprehend what happened far away in New York. India\'s Mira Nair shows the plight of a Muslim Palestinian woman living in New York whose son was suspected of being involved in the atrocity. Idrissa Ouedraogo amusingly tells the story of a little African boy who thinks he sees Osama Bin Laden and wants the reward for capturing him.
Danis Tanovic, the director of No Man\'s Land, places the tragedy alongside the plight of Bosnian widows, while Israel\'s Amos Gitai depicts a \'minor\' bombing in Tel Aviv alongside the larger atrocity. A couple of the episodes are a bit obscure - Sean Penn\'s, for example - and a couple, like Claude Lelouch\'s, really aren\'t very good - but overall this is a truly fascinating experiment and an important film in that it gives us some other ideas, other approaches to the train of events that sometimes seems to be overwhelming us.
