Product Details

• Actors: Karim Saleh, Maral Kamel, Agni Scott, Omar Berdouni, Adnan Maral
• Directors: Antonia Bird
• Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Acorn Media
• DVD Release Date: November 14, 2006
• Run Time: 101 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000I2J6KK
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #69,237 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Hamburg Cell" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The Hamburg Cell, a low-key British film full of unknown actors, may be one of the best movies about the World Trade Center attacks. The movie follows Ziad Jarrah (Karim Saleh), a mild middle-class Arab student in Germany, who is drawn into a radical form of Islam by the heated atmosphere of anger and frustration sparked by the violence in the Arab world and what the clerics and students see as corrupt decadence all around them in the West. Gradually, despite a deep relationship with a liberal-minded Turkish woman (Agni Scott), Jarrah sheds his doubts about his cause; he undergoes military training in Afghanistan and goes to a flight school in Florida, finally ending up on one of the doomed flights of 9/11. Director Antonia Bird, director of the controversial Priest, guides her actors to quiet but natural and compelling performances. For American citizens, it may feel like the movie doesn't present a compelling reason why a seemingly mild and thoughtful student would transform into a committed terrorist; but in other parts of the world, where America--rightly or wrongly--is seen as a bully and a profiteer, the leap from bystander to killer may be all too easy to grasp. A quiet, mesmerizing, and valuable film. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description

"If there is a more important, more urgent story to be told than this, I can’t think of it." —The Guardian (U.K.)

In this daring dramatization of events leading up to 9/11, director Antonia Bird (Face, Priest) casts her bold, unblinking lens on the roots of extremism. You meet a small band of middle-class students who commit themselves to the unconscionable: Ziad Jarrah (Karim Saleh), the confused and ultimately duplicitous lover and husband; Mohamed Atta (Kamel), the stern, puritanical enforcer, seething with hate; and Ramzi bin al Shibh (Omar Berdouni), the fanatic recruiter for violent martyrdom.

Based on exhaustive research, including personal interviews, unpublished correspondence, and the official 9/11 Commission Report, the film offers a coldly detached yet unnervingly intimate study of young men who turned themselves into monsters. What’s more, it reveals the many instances when they might have been stopped.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 9/11 in the making, October 2, 2006

By	P.K. Ryan "The Ryan Identity" (Albany, NY USA) - See all my reviews

'The Hamburg Cell' is an excellent film that follows the 9/11 hijackers in the years leading up to the attacks. The film is simple, yet extremely compelling. The acting is superb, and the characters are portrayed not as frothing at the mouth lunatics, but as the rather ordinary-albeit demented-young men that they were. The film succeeds in showing how one can go from a shy, secular, college student, to an angry, brainwashed, religious zealot. From the several books that I have read on the subject, the film seems to be very accurate. Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, this is the true story of the 9/11 hijackers and how they came to be the most infamous men of our generation. I highly recommend this film.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, October 1, 2006

By	Terecita - See all my reviews

Tries to show how the hijackers came to do what they did, but it's still hard to get your head around. Makes you sad and angry at the same time. In spite of the sensitive subject matter, it's a beautifully made movie. Definitely worth seeing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and sophisticated insight into 9/11 bombers' mindset, January 11, 2007

By	Chris Hopton (Ipswich, Suffolk United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This docu-drama is a meticulously researched account of the recruitment and radicalization of the 9/11 bombers. It represents well the ambivalence some of them felt; it articulates eloquently the sense of alienation that many modern Muslims feel about the West and the double-standards that characterise US foreign policy in the Middle East; it presents fairly the debate within Islam about suicide vs. martyrdom.

It is unparalleled amongst programmes I have seen in explaining so coherently how these particular individuals came to justify to themselves the attacks that took place on September 11. A sobering and compelling account.