From Pamela Pianezza’s 8.30 Variety review: “A disturbingly relevant snapshot of contemporary tensions, Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama observes in minute detail how a small group plans and executes a series of terror attacks in Paris before retreating to a luxurious department store. These aren’t your garden-variety extremists, but a mix of people of different ages and origins, which makes this sure-to-be-controversial treatment all the more provocative.

“Working from a nerve-racking script written five years ago — long before the wave of attacks that started in France on 1.7.15, with the Charlie Hebdo shooting — Bonello replies to the news with a magnetic and purely cinematic gesture that may have frightened the Cannes Film Festival selection committee (the touchy film was ready in time for the May edition), but should spark a wide range of reactions when it screens at the Toronto and San Sebastian film festivals, following its domestic opening in France on 8.31.”