THE STORY – Afghan troops guard the French embassy during the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Tasked with evacuating 500 people to the airport amid chaos, facing grave risks as they attempt a desperate escape from the falling city.
THE CAST – Roschdy Zem, Lyna Khoudri, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Christophe Montenez, Yan Tual & Fatima Adoum
THE TEAM – Martin Bourboulon (Director/Writer) & Alexandre Smia (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 112 Minutes
When it comes to directorial versatility, Martin Bourboulon has made quite the name for himself in the French context over the past ten years: his debut, 2015’s “Daddy or Mommy,” and its sequel, released one year later, were fairly broad comedies with a bit of an edge (the story of two spouses whose separation turns surreal as it transpires they would both like for the other to have custody of the children, so as to not hinder career advancement). In 2021, he wet his biopic beak with “Eiffel,” about the inventor of the famed Tower in Paris, and after that came the massive hit that was the 2023 version of “The Three Musketeers,” released in two parts and massively successful (the same team is now working not only on a third installment but also on a film about the father of original author Alexandre Dumas).
With the exception of “Eiffel,” all those films were produced by Dimitri Rassam and his company Chapter 2, who, alongside Pathé, are also behind Bourboulon’s latest directorial effort: “13 Days 13 Nights,” one of the more prestigious and ambitious French releases of 2025 owing to the people involved and the true story it’s based on. Inspired by the experiences of Commander Mohammed Bina, Bourboulon and co-writer Alexandre Smia transport us to the hellish landscape that was Kabul in the second half of 2021, when the Taliban began reclaiming control over Afghanistan.
This is where we meet Bina (Roschdy Zem), who is days away from retirement after four decades of service and trying to make sure everything is in order at the French Embassy, the only Western mission still open in Kabul. When it becomes clear an evacuation will be necessary, Bina and his colleagues find themselves in an awkward position, as their access to the airport depends directly on negotiations with the local Taliban envoys, a delicate task in which Bina is assisted by his friend and personal interpreter Eva (Lyna Khoudri). A particular matter of contention is the status of Afghan refugees who want to leave the country, which goes counter to the image the Taliban are promoting.
Thus begins what was, by all accounts, a hellish fortnight of uncertainties leading up to when it was finally possible to reach the airport. Unfortunately, the film never really conveys the full weight of that time period. Much like something like “Troy” garnered criticism from some for making the 10-year Trojan war look like a two-month battle, “13 Days 13 Nights” comes across as similarly, frustratingly elliptical, turning two weeks of chaos and dread into approximately a day and a half of moderately suspenseful incidents, written and edited in such a manner as to make it all even more contrived and insincere than it already would have been due to inevitable dramatic liberties.
Because of the title, one might think of another military thriller set in the Middle East, Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”. While Bay and Bourboulon are very different filmmakers, the latter did show a flair for action set pieces in his Musketeers diptych. Here, though, the action takes a backseat, perhaps as a byproduct of a screenplay that chooses to emphasize human drama over shootouts and explosions. In fact, the single biggest set piece in the film is almost entirely off-screen, illustrating once again how the apparent adherence to the visual grammar of a certain type of filmmaking is really just a bit of window dressing, a nice aesthetic in the hands of people who seem completely uninterested in using it as one would reasonably expect it to be in this particular context.
Part of it may simply be a lack of compatibility between subject and director, as “13 Days 13 Nights” goes on to progressively show that “Eiffel” was no fluke in Bourboulon’s filmography: when dealing with a topic that doesn’t lend itself to a certain sense of fun, the filmmaker appears to be somewhat out of his element, removed from his comfort zone and not entirely up to the task of challenging himself with a new approach. He’s a director of crowd-pleasers, saddled here with the paradoxical requirement of delivering a film that, in premise and especially execution, isn’t really something a more popcorn-oriented demographic may gravitate towards (especially outside of France).
On the plus side, besides the pacing, which is quite efficient (perhaps a bit too much in the context of conveying this specific passage of time), the performances are all solid and engaging, particularly when Zem, perfect as a less tongue-in-cheek take on the “too old for this crap” archetype (presumably fueled in part by the personality of the real Bina), and Khoudri share the screen with one another or with Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen, who lends capable support as a journalist chronicling the struggles of the Afghan people when the evacuation was initiated. They provide a soulful nuance to material that, while intriguing, is way too fragmented to serve its purpose properly.
Perhaps it will find its audience on streaming, as suggested by the Disney+ logo popping up in the opening credits due to a recent law requiring that streamers invest in a certain amount of French productions in order to keep operating in the country. And while one shouldn’t jump to conclusions about quality based on the company logos that appear at the beginning, it is quite curious that, based on what we’ve seen so far (the 2025 Cannes line-up boasted a handful of films with Netflix namechecked in the credits), they tend to pick material that, in one way or another, fits that streaming stereotype of something that may even be entertaining, but seldom beyond the bare minimum. This is ironic, considering Bourboulon is far more in his element with the recent Apple TV+ series “Carême,” about a chef turned spy during the Napoleonic era.
