COPILOT
★★★★
OUT 10 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 118 MINS
DIRECTOR Anne Zohra Berrached
CAST Canan Kir, Roger Azar, Jana Julia Roth
Twenty years on from the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, and the events of that fateful day still cast a shadow across the globe. Yet Copilot takes a more intimate approach in its fictionalised narrative, focusing on five years in the life of one of the terrorists; here named Saeed (Roger Azar), yet clearly based on United 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. More specifically, it’s a story told through the experiences of Saeed’s Turkish-born girlfriend (later wife) Asli (based on Ziad’s partner, Aysel Sengün). Played with charm and poise by Canan Kir, Asli is so enamoured with Saeed that she overlooks his increasingly fundamentalist tendencies. As such, this is not so much an exploration of the impact of radicalism — which all takes place off screen — as a sensitive study of the overwhelming, destabilising influence of love.