Night of the Kings (2020)
★★ — Night of the Kings (2020)
Philippe Lacôte's second feature (following his debut Run, which premiered at Cannes in 2014) is a co-production stitching together Canadian, French, and Ivorian financing, a model that has become one of the more reliable routes for ambitious Francophone African cinema to reach international screens. Unusually, and to the film's considerable atmospheric benefit, much of it was shot inside MACA (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction d'Abidjan), a functioning prison on the outskirts of Abidjan, with real inmates participating alongside the professional cast. Lacôte drew on oral storytelling traditions rooted in West African griot culture, giving the film its formal spine of a narrator who must keep talking to stay alive. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020 and became Ivory Coast's submission for the Academy Awards, bringing the country rare awards-season visibility.
A-Z World Movie Tour Ivory Coast La Nuit des Rois (Night of the Kings ) starts with a killer premise: a young prisoner in Ivory Coast’s maximum-security hellhole, La Maca, must spin a story all night to save his life. It’s Shakespeare meets prison yard, and for the first 20 minutes, I was hooked. The setting alone (shot inside a real prison with actual inmates) is electrifying, all shadows and sweat and tension. And the idea of weaving folklore into survival is genius. Enter Roman, our reluctant storyteller, who spins the tale of Zama King, a mythical gang leader. But here’s where it unravels. Roman’s delivery feels like listening to a bedtime story told by someone who keeps forgetting where they left off. Repetition, pacing like a stalled train, and a plot that meanders like a lost puppy. Worse, every time he gets going, the inmates start acting out scenes like random dances, a guy pretending to be a scorpion, someone else barking like a dog. It’s supposed to be immersive, but it just feels like chaos without purpose. The film’s biggest sin is its inability to commit. Is it a fable? A psychological thriller? A cultural critique of power and storytelling? It wants to be all at once and ends up being none. The climax (a surreal, almost silent sequence where Roman’s fate hinges on the sunrise) feels abrupt and oddly hollow. Visually, it’s stunning with golden-hour prison courtyards, faces lit like they’re in a Renaissance painting. But style only gets you so far when the story feels like a hot mess. There’s ambition here, sure, but ambition doesn’t fix a script that can’t decide if it’s about the story or just wants to be the story. A wildly original idea that collapses under its own weight. 2 stars for daring to try.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2025-07-03
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