Brother

Teddy grew up being beaten by his father. His little brother is in the same house. One day the man starts again and Teddy comes between them. The father dies. Teddy is sent to a young offenders' institution to wait for trial for killing him. There is a new order inside: who sits with whom, who says what, and how the guards behave. Teddy does not speak. He does not know what has happened to his brother and his mother does not come. An instructor suggests he take up music. The hearing approaches and unless he tells it nobody will know what happened. Julien Abraham directs and co-wrote the screenplay. The rapper MHD plays Teddy; Darren Muselet, Aïssa Maïga and Jalil Lespert are in the cast. It is a French production. The film went out on Netflix on 31 July 2019. MHD is known in France as a musician; this is his first substantial acting work. The matter it treats is the system of correction; the film is about not a prison but the institution where children are held and the logic that runs there. The narrative does not build Teddy as an innocent victim; the boy is angry and worsens his position by his own decisions. The family violence is kept short at the start and the film is really about what follows. The narrative takes on the cost of silence; Teddy's not speaking is both protection and punishment. Its limit is structure; the narrative runs to type, the secondary characters are thin, and the ending is where expected. Who it is for: viewers who like French social drama. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the narrative familiar, and the ending bitter.