Dheepan

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015, Dheepan is the latest from French auteur Jacques Audiard, director of the vastly admired A Prophet, Rust & Bone, The Beat That My Heart Skippedand Read My Lips.

Its unexpected focus is on the titular character Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), a Tamil Tiger in Sri Lanka. As the Civil War ends and the Tigers face defeat he decides to flee to France – taking with him two strangers, a woman and a little girl. He hopes that, posing as a family, it’ll be easier for them all to claim asylum in France.

Arriving in Paris, they move between homes until Dheepan finds work in a run-down housing estate outside the capital. Working hard to build a new life and home for his new, fake family, he nevertheless finds an inescapable violence all around him – so much so it seems inevitable that his old psychological war wounds will be tragically reopened.