Dheepan

Last year the Jury at Cannes Film Festival decided to award Dheepan with a Palm d’Or, the most prestigious award for a film, and the decision is understandable. The film follows three Sri Lankan refugees posing as a family, though they are unrelated. They leave their home country due to civil war and move to France, only to find themselves living in a rough housing project in the suburbs of Paris filled with drug dealers and criminals. The film is filled with incredibly complex characters who are rarely seen on the big screen, and contains a lot of subtle details that add to the realism of the story. There are also elements of crime thriller mixed in as well as dark comedy - think The Wire meets No Country for Old Men - but don’t be fooled; this film stands on its own with no clichéd plot devices.

Jonatan Benarroch