Ranks of men in uniform are bombarded with Molotov cocktails, makeshift mortars, and small arms fire. Commando units prepare to infiltrate a smoke-covered urban fortress. A city burns under the watchful eye of the press, reporting on “a civil war”.
This isn’t the siege of Aleppo, it’s a scene from Romain Gavras’s Athena, set in one of France’s burning banlieues. Amid the smoke grenades, police and Athenians engage in brutal fighting at close quarters, with metal rods and batons. Later, the police use fire ladders to scale the walls of a tower block. Athenians on wheels circle around a beleaguered police testudo, firing makeshift mortars at point blank range. Men on both sides are visibly shell-shocked.
