Lieutenant Abdel, an Algerian-French soldier, holds a press conference outside a police station after his 13-year-old brother, Idir, dies in the hospital, apparently the result of three policemen beating him and then leaving him for dead.

He appeals for calm after the death, but a group of youths, led by Abdel's brother Karim, disrupt the press conference by tossing a Molotov cocktail and raiding the police station.

With the youths refusing to let him leave, Moktar and his gang take shelter in Athena's shisha lounge, where they dig a hole to stash the contraband until the uprising has passed.

Karim, who us intent on recapturing Jerôme, confronts Abdel through the security shutter covering the front of the shisha lounge, and others try to break in through a side door.

"[3] Todd McCarthy of Deadline Hollywood described the film as "a torrent, an inundation, a cascade of rage, fury and frustration over the realities of life for a particular group of French families" that "grabs you by the throat and barely allows you a moment for a gasp of air.

"[11] David Ehrlich of IndieWire rated the film 'C+' and considered it as "just a really cool movie about a country that's ready to catch fire" that "would have been more harrowing and successful had it fully owned the courage of [the anger of the dispossessed].

"[4] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily considered that Athena "works better as a brash, immersive action spectacle than a thought-provoking political thriller.

[2] Lucile Commeaux of France Culture considered the film to be "dishonest and bad, in every sense of the word" and a "big clip released on a platform that aestheticizes the aftermath of an alleged police blunder" with a "hyper-artificial structure [that] hardly maintains interest.

"[13] Sandra Onana of Libération, who denounced a "deluge of stylized violence" and "non-existent characters," judged that "Romain Gavras stuns the spectator with a political casualness that forces disrespect.

"[15] French far-right[16] politicians, such as Gilbert Collard, a member of Éric Zemmour's party, Reconquête, reacted as soon as the teaser was released by talking about the film as a harbinger of a "civil war" to come.