24 Days
In January of 2006 a beautiful young woman walks into a Parisian cellphone shop where 23-year old Ilan works as a sales attendant. She asks for his number, and later, she calls asking to meet. The next time Ilan’s family hears from him is through a cryptic online message from kidnappers demanding ransom.
French director Alexandre Arcady delivers one of the most “wrenching and politically astute” films to come out of France (Screen Daily). Arcady’s cinematic adaptation, based on the book co-written by Ilan’s mother, Ruth Halimi, offers a searing insight into Ilan’s vicious ordeal and the harrowing experience of his family waiting and hoping the police would save their son. For 24 days the police, insistent upon handling the case as a normal for-ransom kidnapping, failed to recognize the anti-Semitic hatred of his abductors, squandering many opportunities to save Ilan while his family received nearly 700 phone calls, insults, threats, photographs and sound recordings of their tortured son.
110Rated NR
Distributor Menemsha Films
in French with English subtitles