The film-maker was at the
Paris concert venue when attackers opened
fire. His debut feature is inspired by his gruelling journey to recovery
‘For three days after the Bataclan, I thought I was dead,” says Ismaël el Iraki, whose debut feature, Zanka Contact, about two lost souls recovering from PTSD, is playing at the Venice film festival. It’s a Wild at Heart-type love story starring Ahmed Hammoud and Moroccan
music star Khansa Batma with debts to Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Leone. A car crash throws together a has-been rocker who has just returned to Casablanca and a streetwise con-artist, who get lulled into the shenanigans of the city’s music underworld.
Zanka Contact riffs on the director’s experiences trying to recover from all he witnessed at the Eagles of Death Metal concert at Paris’s Bataclan venue in November 2015, when gunmen massacred 90 people in a night of coordinated attacks by terrorists that left 143 dead and hundreds injured. El Iraki stared at the
Gunman as he pulled the trigger. The bullet scraped past him. He was preparing to die when the fearless actions of a security guard called Didi saved him. Oblivious to his personal wellbeing, Didi kept returning to the concert hall, leading the injured and distressed to safety. “I saw a hero with my own eyes,” recalls El Iraki, who escaped through the front door of the building.