In this daring dramatization of events leading up to 9/11, director Antonia Bird (Face, Priest) casts her bold, unblinking lens on the roots of extremism. You meet a small band of middle-class students who commit themselves to the unconscionable: Ziad Jarrah (Karim Saleh), the confused and ultimately duplicitous lover and husband; Mohamed Atta (Kamel), the stern, puritanical enforcer, seething with hate; and Ramzi bin al Shibh (Omar Berdouni), the fanatic recruiter for violent martyrdom. Based on exhaustive research, including personal interviews, unpublished correspondence, and the official 9/11 Commission Report, the film offers a coldly detached yet unnervingly intimate study of young men who turned themselves into monsters. What's more, it reveals the many instances when they might have been stopped.