Nocturama 2017

The film centers on a tight-knit group of young, idealistic rebels who hatch a meticulously planned wave of attacks across Paris, aiming to shake the foundations of a society they view as hollow. When the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion, a flashback reveals that the bombs—made from semtex—were supplied to the group, largely composed of teenagers and university students, by Greg, the sole adult who remains outside the core circle. The plan threads through several high-stakes targets: cars, towering office buildings, government structures, and even a symbolic strike at Jeanne d’Arc. The tension is built as the youths coordinate their actions with surgical precision, trusting their own urban insurgency to bring about a dramatic reckoning.

In the early hours, three members—Sarah, her partner David, and Yacine—embark on a dangerous mission to infiltrate the floor of a gleaming skyscraper and plant a device, with Fred serving as an external ally who works as a security guard at the site. The atmosphere crackles with a sense of urgency as they move through marble corridors and glass facades, careful to stay one step ahead of the building’s security network. A brutal moment interrupts the plan when Fred, while searching David’s floor, shoots an innocent office worker who answered a call. The moment underscores the precarious line between zeal and collateral damage. The subsequent response from another guard is swift and deadly, and Fred himself is killed in a desperate plea for mercy. David, hearing the gunfire from a neighboring corridor, is forced to improvise, and he discards his bomb rather than let it become a fatal liability.

After the bombs detonate remotely, the group converges on a central department store in the heart of Paris, intending to ride out the manhunt through the night and into the following day. A larger, more ominous element enters the scene as the younger insurgents are joined by others—André, Samir, Samir’s sister Sabrina, and Mika—who contribute their own anxieties, ambitions, and loyalties to the precarious dynamic. The whereabouts of Greg and Fred become central concerns, as is Omar, who turns out to be an inside man whose loyalty complicates the security landscape. Omar reveals that he has bound and gagged the rest of the security team and cut power to the cameras, and a chilling detail is revealed: the guards have been killed. Yet the fate of Greg, whose assignment was to assassinate a bank executive, remains shrouded in mystery, a question that gnaws at the group as they huddle in the store’s aisles.

As the night wears on, the insurgents live off groceries from the store, swap clothes from boutiques, and watch the outside world flicker on the display televisions. The siege atmosphere deepens as a sense of isolation settles over them while the city outside debates the unfolding crisis. A homeless man and his wife appear, their presence unsettling yet oddly humanizing, as David shows a glimmer of protective feeling while continuing to rationalize their survival strategy. A cyclist offers a blunt, street-level view of the authorities’ relentless search, describing a city that seems inexorably driven toward a dramatic blow. The cyclist’s blunt assessment—echoing a line of dialogue earlier between André and Sarah—frames civilization itself as a fragile condition that teeters on collapse: “Civilization is a condition for the downfall of civilization.”

Within the enclosed world of the department store, the group’s nerves tighten further as the tension between fear and solidarity intensifies. Mika experiences a troubling dream in which Greg reappears, claiming he forgot to hide his gun and asking whether Mika would have done the same, only to vanish, leaving behind a lifelike mannequin as a disturbing placeholder for a living threat. The dream hints at unresolved guilt and the fragility of belief within the cause they have embraced. When the homeless couple briefly becomes part of the group’s fragile sense of humanity, the others watch in anxious, almost reverent silence as David and Sarah share a moment of tenderness, trying to ground themselves in something human amid the looming storm.

As authorities close in, André advises restraint and cautions against rash declarations, while the remaining insurgents prepare the final, deadly leverage—semtex placed along the pillars of the store to compel a cautious, if grim, surrender. The moment of decision arrives as the police finally storm the department store, calling for surrender even as the group raises their hands in a shaky gesture of compliance. The response is cold and unyielding: the police shoot, without hesitation, every person who presents a threat, including the homeless couple who had briefly found shelter among the aisles. One by one, the young conspirators fall, their pleas and bargaining attempts silenced in a rapid succession of gunfire, and the interior of the store becomes a silent, grim tableau of fallen lives.

The film ends with a stark meditation on the human consequences of extremist action and the cost of despair that can drive youth toward violence. What begins as a bold, idealistic gamble ends as an unflinching, brutal confrontation with the realities of power, fear, and the fragility of communal bonds under siege. The narrative never shies away from the chaotic aftermath that such choices unleash, leaving viewers with a lingering sense of tragedy and the moral ambiguity at the heart of ideological radicalism.

Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Jamil McCraven, Manal Issa, Hamza Meziani, Ilias Le Doré, Laure Valentinelli, Martin Petit-Guyot, Rabah Nait Oufella, Robin Goldbronn, Vincent Rottiers