Les Miserables

Aroview: This impressive feature debut from French director Ladj Ly is set in the French criminal underworld in aftermath of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, when police violence erupted in suburban Paris.

Set in Montfermeil, the same troubled area of Paris as the Victor Hugo novel, it follows a corrupt cop who joins an Anti-Crime Squad and effects the lives of an impoverished local community. A sprawling piece of French realism filled with moral complexities and astute observations, inspired by Hugo’s maxim that “there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators”.

“The most incendiary crime film to emerge from French cinema since Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine.” ~ Times (UK).