Dheepan

Dheepan
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jacques Audiard
Produced by	Pascal Caucheteux Uncredited: Jacques Audiard
Written by	Dialogue: Jacques Audiard Thomas Bidegain Noé Debré
Screenplay by	Jacques Audiard Thomas Bidegain Noé Debré
Starring	Antonythasan Jesuthasan
Music by	Nicolas Jaar
Cinematography	Eponine Momenceau
Edited by	Juliette Welfling
Production companies	Canal+ Ciné+ France 2 Cinéma France Télévisions Page 114 Why Not Productions
Distributed by	UGC Distribution
Release dates	21 May 2015 (2015-05-21) (Cannes) 26 August 2015 (2015-08-26) (France)
Running time	115 minutes[1]
Country	France
Language	Tamil French English[2]
Budget	€8 million[3]
Box office	$4.9 million[4]

Dheepan is a 2015 French crime drama film directed by Jacques Audiard and co-written by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, and Noé Debré. The film was partly inspired by Montesquieu's Persian Letters.^[5] Featuring novelist, and former Tamil Tiger child soldier Antonythasan Jesuthasan in the lead role, the film tells the story of three Tamil refugees who flee the civil war-ravaged Sri Lanka and come to France, in the hope of reconstructing their lives.^[2][6]

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.^[7]

Plot

Sivadhasan is a Tamil Tiger soldier during the last days of the Sri Lankan Civil War. After the armed conflict resolves, his side loses and he is forced to move to a refugee camp. There he decides to move to France to take a fresh chance at life. However, in order to secure political asylum, he requires a convincing cover story. He is given the passport of a dead man, Dheepan, and pairs with people he barely knows posing as his family. Along with his supposed wife, Yalini and his supposed 9-year-old daughter, Illayaal, they get on a ship bound for Paris. Upon arrival, he lands a job as a resident caretaker and starts building a new life in a housing project in Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, a northeastern suburb of Paris, which turns out to be another conflict zone for him.

Cast

• Antonythasan Jesuthasan as Dheepan/Sivadhasan
• Kalieaswari Srinivasan as Yalini
• Claudine Vinasithamby as Illayaal
• Vincent Rottiers as Brahim
• Marc Zinga as Youssouf
• Faouzi Bensaïdi as Monsieur Habib
• Bass Dhem as Azziz
• Franck Falise as Le gardien du Hall C
• Joséphine de Meaux as La directrice de l'école
• Jean-Baptiste Pouilloux as Le juriste au foyer
• Nathan Anthonypillai as L'interprète
• Vasanth Selvam as Colonel Cheran

Release

Box office

Dheepan opened in France on 28 August 2015. The film grossed $3,882,022 in France and $999,774 elsewhere for a worldwide total of $4,881,796.^[4]

Critical reception

The film received largely positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 100% rating based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10.^[8] Metacritic reports a 78 out of 100 rating, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[9]

Director and stars at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.^[10][11][12] After winning the award, Audiard said "To receive a prize from the Coen brothers is something pretty exceptional. I'm very touched".^[13]

According to critic Andrew Pulver, the film "may not be the director’s most immediately electrifying film, but in its understated way, it’s an immensely powerful work".^[14] Commenting on the film, critic Jason Gorber notes that besides depicting immigrant experiences and integration, the film "is polemical without being didactic, and its message about human spirit and how connections of love can flourish in the most astonishing of ways is extremely moving".^[15] The Independent called it "a radical and astonishing film that turns conventional thinking about immigrants on its head".^[16]

Accolades

References

External links

• Dheepan at the Internet Movie Database
• Dheepan at Box Office Mojo
• Dheepan at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dheepan at Metacritic