Inspired by his own childhood, Philippe Lacôte’s hallucinogenic fable plays out inside a notorious Ivory Coast jail run by its own inmates…
Of the three Ivory Coast submissions for the foreign language film Oscar over the years, two have been by the writer-director Philippe Lacôte: 2014’s Run, which was widely regarded as heralding an Ivorian film-making renaissance, and Night of the Kings (2020), one of 15 films shortlisted for the renamed best international feature award. A shapeshifting tale of incarceration and emancipation, it may have missed out on an Oscar nomination, yet its vivid, genre-fluid investigation of the alchemical art of storytelling definitely hits the mark.
In a remote clearing on the edge of Abidjan’s Banco forest stands the notorious Maison d’arrêt et de correction d’Abdijan – La Maca – an institution described by one of its keepers as “the only
prison in the world run by an inmate”. A commanding aerial shot highlights the prison’s isolation, a brutal structure hidden by dense vegetation. Captions introduce us to “a world with its own codes and laws”, the first and foremost of which is that “the Dangôro, the supreme master, rules the prisoners”.