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French producer Alain Brigand solicited 11 short films from around the world in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Four directors fulfilled their assignments with imagination and intelligence; three contributed mediocre hack work; and four came through with all the ponderousness and inanity they could muster. To start with the good: Samira Makhmalbaf’s piece on the inadequacy of language to represent disaster is graced by her characteristic undemonstrative tenderness; Idrissa Ouedraogo offers a wry short story and Youssef Chahine a complex investigation (which, no surprise, has been reviled for its criticism of the United States); and Shohei Imamura uses his screen time to indict all holy wars through an outlandish fable. In the mediocre episodes (by Danis Tanovic, Ken Loach, and Mira Nair), filmmaking takes a back seat to good intentions. The bad ones are very bad: Claude Lelouch’s ridiculous soap opera; Sean Penn’s hoky allegory (uplifted by a moving Ernest Borgnine performance); Amos Gitaï’s witless, obnoxious single-take exercise; and, worst of all, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s bludgeoning, half-baked "experimental" piece. In English, French, Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew with English subtitles. (134 minutes)
BY CHRIS FUJIWARA
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