13 DAYS 13 NIGHTS © Jérôme Prébois
13 Days and 13 Nights of peril and suspense in Martin Bourboulon’s feature selected for Out of Competition
Fresh off the success of his two-part epic Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), Martin Bourboulon moves from the 17th century to the 21st century with 13 jours 13 nuits (13 Days 13 Nights), the true story of Commander Mohamed Bida.
It’s the summer of 2021. As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, the Taliban begins to seize control of the capital city of Kabul. There is only one place where fleeing Afghans and foreigners can find a safe haven: the French Embassy, under the protection of Commander Mohamed Bida and his security team. With exemplary composure, Bida takes on the role of negotiator. His goal? To evacuate 500 people before inextricable chaos takes hold.
Mohamed Bida, the Embassy’s head of security, wrote about his experience in 13 jours, 13 nuits : dans l’enfer de Kaboul (In the Hell of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights). He had spent five years in Afghanistan and was getting ready to retire. But on August 15, 2021, everything changed. He recounts the terror of that day, the image of hundreds of people swarming the gates of the Embassy. And then the full reality of the mission set in: there are 3,000 people, and he has to get them all safely out of the country.
Director Martin Bourboulon read the book and found himself riveted by the suffocating, raw, harrowing tale. As he told Le Parisien:
“I loved the fact that it has elements of a thriller — the clock is counting down — , but there’s also an extraordinarily intense emotional side to it — all of these individual fates hanging in the balance, all of these people, forced by events outside of their control, having to flee their homeland.”
Bourboulon, who directed the romantic drama Eiffel and the Apple TV+ series Carême, has brought a gripping story to the screen — one part thriller, one part action film. With his latest, he collaborates again with Dimitri Rassam, the producer of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) and Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo).
Filming began in Morocco in 2024, with Roschdy Zem as Commander Bida and Lyna Khoudri as Eva, a French-Afghan humanitarian who serves as an interpreter. Co-starring are Sidse Babett Knudsen (L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche (The Great Arch), Le Fil (An Ordinary Case)) and Sina Parvaneh (Les Nuits de Mashhad (Holy Spider)).
