Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby
With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world cinema. In an arresting performance, the nonprofessional actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan (himself a former child soldier) stars as a Tamil fighter who, along with a woman and a child posing as his wife and daughter, flees war-torn Sri Lanka only to land in a Paris suburb blighted by drugs. As the makeshift family embarks on a new life, DHEEPAN settles into an intimate social-realist mode before tightening into a dynamic turf-war thriller, as well as an unsettling study of the psychological aftereffects of combat. Searing and sensitive, Audiard’s film is a unique depiction of the refugee experience as a continuous crisis of identity.
Up Next in 21st Century Cinema
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Certain Women
Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2016 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle WilliamsThe expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy and unfolding in self-containe...
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The Other Side of Hope
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki • 2017 • Finland
This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismäki, a response to the ongoing global refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a displaced Syrian, lands in Helsinki as a stowaway; meanwhile, middle-ag...
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David Lynch: The Art Life
Directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm • 2016 • United States, Denmark
A rare glimpse into the mind of one of cinema’s most enigmatic visionaries, DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE offers an absorbing portrait of the artist, as well as an intimate encounter with the man himself. ...
