"Day Night Day Night" is a chilling fictional film that seems more real than most biopics or documentaries. It’s about a would-be suicide bomber who intends to blow herself up in Time Square.

It has won many advanced critical kudos, and it was the most engaging film this year at the Chicago International Film Festival.

The film has some magnificent shots that are bathed in sterile white light, but most of the film is shot in a simple, straightforward manner.

Superior to most of the big budget films made about the same subject, such as "World Trade" and "United 93," rarely has non-action and silence been used better.

Director Julie Loktev exhibits great skill and instincts in her second film. Her less is more strategy is perfectly suited to the subject of the film.

But newcomer Luisa William’s back to the basics acting style often carries the film. Williams gives an utterly convincing performance as the suicide bomber who is billed merely as "she." Her genius is in knowing what to hold back in the performance.

Williams was working as a nanny when she saw a flier advertising for a casting call, and she gives one of the year’s freshest and most potent performances. She’s brilliantly understated with no accent so we can never tell where she’s from or what she wants.

Hardly anything happens, yet the film had me on the edge of my seat. It begins when She meets with three polite, masked men who in a hotel room put her through an exhausting series of ritualistic routines to prepare for the bombing.

For instance, she has to make a video; she turns in her IDs; and she gets to eat her favorite foods. During the rest of the film, Benoit Debie’s handheld camera tracks her as she walks around Manhattan. She buys some of her favorite sweets, and she nearly detonates when people bump into her.  .

Interestingly enough the film sidesteps the issue of politics almost completely. We never find out which cause she is championing. The only hint is that her parents died abruptly, so avenging their deaths may be a motive.

The film will probably bother some people because it humanizes the bomber, who seems to otherwise be a nice, attractive, normal young woman. She could be any woman who uses extreme violence for any extreme cause.

"Day Night Day Night" is a gutsy and original film, which is like nothing else I have seen all year. It makes most of the films that are getting Oscar hype look inconsequential, shallow, and timid in comparison. Hopefully, it won’t bomb at the box office.