After the midnight session at the last Cannes Film Festival, The Rebel hits our cinemas this Wednesday, August 31st. and marks the big return to cinema for Bad Boys 3 directors Adil El Arbi and Bilal Falla.
2022 was supposed to be the year of Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah: a midnight screening at the Cannes Film Festival, a successful foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with several episodes of Miss Marvel (including the pilot) where they were hailed, and the completion of filming on the highly anticipated Batgirl on HBO Max next year .
Yes, but it’s true: Warner’s change of direction after the merger with Discovery decided otherwise, a choice that was both radical and unprecedented. DC’s feature film was indeed canceled due to a change in strategy (completely rejecting the strategy established by its predecessors) and a history of tax cuts. So the two directors didn’t make the news they hoped for, but Rebel’s theatrical release allows them to make amends.
A feature film alongside the Croisette last May marks their return to the big screen and to their native Belgium. Those who saw them were noticed with Black and Gangsta, before Hollywood grabbed them for the needs of Bad Boys 3, whose success surprised more than one in the world.
With Rebel, they return to more independent cinema. But their journey across the Atlantic didn’t affect their virtuosity or the intensity of their staging, which we sense from the trailer. Neither does their taste for social themes, even if jihad replaces the gang wars and organized crime milieu of their previous films. We follow Kamal (Abubakr Bensaih), trapped in Raqqa as part of an armed group, as he travels to Syria to help victims of the war.
Everyone in Belgium of North African origin knows someone who went to Syria, and often these young people left in groups.
Adding to the moral dilemmas of his situation is the fate of his younger brother, who dreams of joining him and becomes easy prey for recruiters. A real shock in power, on a topic close to their hearts: “In 2012 and 2013, people of our age, mostly of our origin, of Moroccan origin, who lived in Belgium, decided to go to Syria. Something we have never really seen”– explained in the press kit.
“During the conflict in Iraq, there was no similar phenomenon. It was about young people we sometimes knew, or friends of friends. Everyone in Belgium of North African descent knows someone who went there, and often these young people. They left in groups. We wondered what they were going to do in Syria.” With its one-word title that matches the titles of Black and Gangsta, Rebel allows them an element of response.
Source: allocine
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