Top Floor, Left Wing

“Grippingly clever, deftly realized and energetically thesped”- Variety

Like every morning, state prosecutor François Echeveria (Hippolyte Girardot) sets out to serve his summonses in the rough Paris suburb of Villon à Montigny, before returning home to his disastrous love life. But on this particular September day, fate has other plans. A domino-like chain of misunderstandings culminates in François being taken hostage in the tenement apartment of Berber immigrant Mohand (Fellag) and his teenage son Salem (Aymen Saïdi)—events quickly construed by the police to be a terrorist act. As a tense standoff builds outside and these three unlikely flatmates try to make the best of a bad situation, first-time director Angelo Cianci deftly balances the politics of terror with the comedy of mistaken identity. The result is a very funny movie on a very serious subject. Winner of FIPRESCI international press award at the At the 61st Berlin International Film Festival!