FILM · 2022 · FRANCE
Athena
11 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
11 Interesting Facts About Athena
Interesting Facts (9)
- #001
The opening scene was the last one shot because it was so complicated to pull off: it's 7 separate takes stitched together in post-production to look like a single unbroken 10-minute shot.
- #002
The whole film has 163 cuts, for an average shot length of 33.2 seconds; the longest shot (the first) runs 10 minutes 22 seconds, and the shortest is just 15 frames.
- #003
Most scenes, even the most complex, have no CGI at all: everything was carefully choreographed, including the many flares and fireworks.
- #004
About 80% of the film was shot on an IMAX camera, the last one available when shooting began (only 50 exist worldwide), so breaking it was not an option.
- #005
Since most scenes are single takes, the goal on a typical day wasn't to get as many takes or scenes as possible but simply to nail one long take, which caused trouble in complex scenes, especially with the camera operator bumping into extras (or vice versa), above all in the exit scene.
- #006
For the riot police assault, the crew rented Europe's tallest camera crane from the Czech Republic, mounted the IMAX camera on it and put the whole crane on a harvest transport truck. The truck slowly reversed at about 3 miles per hour so the camera could follow the police along the ground and up the stairs, and then into the projects after an operator took the camera off the crane. The driver had never done anything like it and apparently pulled it off.
- #007
In the exit scene, camera operator Myron Mance followed Abdel through the projects and then through the crowd, and at the end was strapped to a crane that lifted him into the air while he filmed the crowd below. Surprisingly, that last part wasn't the hardest: weaving through the extras was far more error-prone, and every mistake was costly, since everything had to be reset and the take started over.
- #008
The end credits dedicate the film to the memory of DJ Mehdi and Bernard Moussa Gomis.
- #009
When the kids taunt the police after building the barricade and the camera flips upside down in midair, it's on a drone, not a crane.
Production Story (1)
- #010
The score was pieced together in post-production from recordings made all over: parts like the winds and some choirs were recorded in Paris, while for special elements the team went abroad, to Athens for eight people singing at extremely low pitch, to London for the children's choir and to Skopje for the strings.
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #011
To work out the choreography for the long takes, the cast and crew rehearsed for a month and a half before shooting.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work