Night of the Kings

A prison in Ivory Coast. MACA is in the middle of the forest and the inmates run the inside; there is a leader called Dangôro and when he falls ill he is required to take his own life, that is the rule. A young man arrives. A red moon rises and a ceremony will be held that night: the one chosen becomes Roman and must tell a story until morning. If the story ends the teller dies. The young man starts talking. His subject is a gang leader and his death. The inmates complete the telling by dancing and singing. Philippe Lacôte writes and directs. Koné Bakary, Steve Tientcheu, Digbeu Jean Cyrille and Rasmané Ouédraogo are in the cast. It is an Ivorian, French, Canadian and Senegalese co-production. The film screened at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and went into distribution in many countries afterwards. It was submitted as Ivory Coast's entry for the Oscar. Its ground is a real place; the MACA prison is a known institution in the country and the order in which the inside is left to the inmates is described. The matter it treats is storytelling itself; the teller lives as long as the story lasts, and that is directly a question of life and death. The telling in the prison is built like a chorus; the inmates act the scene out and the narrative becomes theatre. The film touches the country's recent history as well; the civil war and political crisis are inside the story. The photography is colourful and the night scenes are built with light. The narrative does not separate the real from the legendary. Its limit is structure; the two layers do not always agree and the narrative scatters in places. Who it is for: viewers who like African cinema and films built on storytelling. Who it is not for: it is scattered, symbolic, and the ending hard.