September 11

Eleven directors, eleven short films. Everyone was given the same length: eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame. The subject is 11 September. But most of the films are not set in New York. In one a teacher in Iran tries to explain the event to refugee children. In another, children in Burkina Faso think they have seen Bin Laden and go after him for the reward. One is about the eleventh of September in Chile, the coup of 1973. Another shows that morning for a deaf woman; she hears nothing and the day goes on as usual. One section is entirely dark and there is only sound. Eleven directors made the film together; Amos Gitai, Ken Loach, Youssef Chahine, Sean Penn and Mira Nair are among them. The production is based in France. Ken Loach's section takes on the Chilean coup and builds a letter on the two dates falling together. In Sean Penn's section Ernest Borgnine plays an old man living alone. Amos Gitai's runs in a single take and shows an attack in Jerusalem being made into news. The compilation was argued over on release; some sections were criticised for their view of American foreign policy. The matter it treats is how the same event was heard in different places; the film builds no single view. The difference in register between the sections is wide and the compilation is deliberately not harmonious. Its limit is balance; some sections are weak and some do not fill their time. Who it is for: viewers who like short film anthologies and political cinema. Who it is not for: it is uneven, in pieces, and some sections are loaded with argument.