Intense and powerful, Dheepan is a refugee fleeing civil-war torn Sri Lanka. Collecting a ready-made family (a ‘wife’ and ‘daughter’) to make entry into France easier, the Tamil soldier (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) finds himself as a caretaker on a gang-controlled, crime-ridden housing estate on the outskirts of Paris.
It’s a slow, painful narrative as the three strangers, originally hostile to each other, struggle to maintain their identities in an alien world of gang warfare, violence and drugs. But, gradually over time, Dheepan and Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) build a life for themselves and Illayaal.
Director Jacques Audiard unexpectedly collected the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival for Dheepan. With its unequivocal realism, it’s challenging yet captivating, understated yet ultimately instilled with hope.
Rating: 72%
Director: Jacques Audiard (The Sisters Brothers, A Prophet)
Writer: Jacques Audiard (The Sisters Brothers, A Prophet), Thomas Bidegain (The Sisters Brothers, A Prophet), Noé Debré (Les cowboys, Through the Air)
Main cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan (Roobha, A Private War), Kalieaswari Srinivasan (Sivaranjiniyum Innum Sila Pengalum), Vincent Rottiers (Renoir, The Devils)
An Opinion or Two 