Divines

Synopsis

“This tough, feisty French disaffected youth drama, which lifted the Camera d’Or cross-section prize for best first film at this year’s Cannes film festival, crackles with attitude, anger and lust for life. It’s an energy channelled by Oulaya Amamra, whose knockout performance as a smart, headstrong, ambitious teenager from a deprived urban banlieu carries the film through the occasional uneven patch. But “Divines” does something more than simply storyboarding the pressure-cooker frustrations of young people with nowhere to go, by introducing a spiritual, magical realist element that comes through in an engaging contemporary dance subplot. (…) “Divines” is grounded in the utterly believable character of a smart but stymied girl who dreams of breaking out of her boxed-in environment – a theme brilliantly conveyed on a visual level not only by those smartphone doorway-ratio images, but also by the contrast between the widescreen format and the often claustrophobic interiors. Fizzing with ideas, as difficult to pin down as its heroine, the film keeps generating electricity long after the lights have gone down.” (Lee Marshall, Screen International)

Around The World in 14 Films 2016, presented by Helene Hegemann