Dir: Paul Greengrass; Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Thorbjørn Harr, Anja Maria Svenkerud, Seda Witt, Isak Bakli Aglen. Cert tbc, 143 mins.

Paul Greengrass may be best known these days for his Bourne films – Supremacy, Ultimatum and, lately, Jason. But since his days in the TV documentary business, the English director has always had his eye trained on the real world.

His latest film, about the 2011 Norway terror attacks in which 77 people died, and made with a cast of Norwegian actors speaking English, follows in the tradition of Bloody Sunday, United 93 and to an extent Captain Philips by bringing clarity to an atrocity through pure force of cinematic technique.

The title makes the film sound self-contained: the car-bombing and mass shooting carried out by the far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and nothing more. But 22 July, which Greengrass adapted from the book One of Us by the Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, is a patient, long-form piece, beginning 24 hours before the event and running all the way to Breivik’s trial the following summer – and, for its magnificent, John Ford-like pair of final shots, a few cathartic steps beyond.