Atonement

Friday, September 18: This screening will be presented with open captions.

Grounded in emotionally layered performances from Boyd Holbrook (TIFF ’18’s The Predator), Hiam Abbass (TIFF ’25’s Palestine 36), and Oscar winner Kenneth Branagh (TIFF ’21’s Belfast), this searing real-life story follows the lives of several characters in the years following a horrifying event. Based on Dexter Filkins’ 2012 New Yorker essay of the same name, the feature debut from Oscar-nominated writer-director Reed Van Dyk (DeKalb Elementary) considers the consequences of war long after the last shots are fired.

In Baghdad, in 2003, US Marine Lou D’Alessandro (Holbrook) and his unit open fire on two ostensibly hostile vehicles. Three passengers are killed before it’s revealed that those vehicles were carrying three generations of a civilian family. A decade later, following a dishonorable discharge, Lou is back in San Diego, haunted by the incident, unsupported by Veterans Affairs, and unable to continue the life he started before the war.

Meanwhile, Mariam (Abbass), the matriarch of the family torn apart on that fateful day, has begun a new life in Glendale with her daughter’s young family. She’s profiled by journalist Michael Reid (Branagh), who was also in Baghdad when the tragedy unfolded. Desperate to explain his side of the story, Lou asks Michael to broker a meeting with Mariam. Though terrified of reopening old wounds, Lou believes this might be everyone’s best chance to finally heal. 

Atonement asks difficult questions about reconciliation and trauma while acknowledging that everyone seeks out different means of moving on. This is a story about reckoning with unimaginable pain en route to catharsis and, just maybe, atonement. 

Content advisory: extreme violence, coarse language, mature themes