Night of the Kings (2020)

Night of the Kings (or La Nuit des Rois, to give it its original French title) is a Côte d'Ivoire co-production released in 2020, bringing together production companies from Canada, France and the country itself to tell a story rooted firmly in West African oral tradition. The film is set almost entirely within La Maca, a real maximum-security prison situated in the forests outside Abidjan, and that setting carries genuine historical weight. La Maca has long had a reputation as a place where the state's authority effectively stops at the gates, with gangs and internal hierarchies filling the vacuum. The premise draws on the griotic tradition, the ancient West African practice of the griot as storyteller, keeper of history and communal memory, and filters it through a pressure-cooker scenario that gives the whole thing an urgent, almost theatrical energy. It is the kind of film that announces itself as different from the first frame, and it arrived on the international festival circuit to considerable attention, representing Côte d'Ivoire as its submission for the Academy Awards' International Feature Film category.

The film is written and directed by Philippe Lacôte, an Ivorian filmmaker who has spent much of his career working across documentary and fiction, often returning to the political and social landscape of his home country. His previous fiction feature, Run (2014), similarly used Abidjan as its backdrop and drew on the turbulence of Ivorian history, so this is not a director stumbling into unfamiliar territory. Lacôte made the unusual and genuinely bold production decision to shoot inside an actual functioning prison, working with real inmates as part of the ensemble, a choice that gives certain scenes a texture that no amount of set dressing could manufacture. The production came together through Banshee Films, Peripheria Productions and Wassakara Productions, a combination of French-Canadian and Ivorian infrastructure that has become a relatively common model for francophone African cinema seeking international distribution without sacrificing its local identity. If you are curious how that Canadian connection plays out in other recent work from the country, it is worth glancing at the blog's coverage of This Is Not a Test (2025), another Canadian production reviewed here.

The principal cast is led by Koné Bakary as Roman, the young prisoner thrust into the role of storyteller, with Steve Tientcheu as the prison boss whose decree sets the night's events in motion. Tientcheu will be familiar to fans of French cinema from his work in the gritty social dramas that have come out of France over the past decade, and he brings a quiet, physical authority to the role without needing to raise his voice much. Digbeu Jean Cyrille, Rasmané Ouédraogo and Issaka Sawadogo round out the principal ensemble, and several of the supporting players, as noted, are drawn from the prison population itself. The film runs at a lean 93 minutes, though as you will see from the review below, whether that economy of runtime feels lean or laboured is rather central to the whole argument. For a point of comparison with another non-English language drama from the 2020s that wrestles with similar questions of cultural identity and storytelling under pressure, the review of Tiger Stripes (2023) makes for an interesting companion read, as does the blog's take on Mustang (2015), another drama that positions its characters in a confined world governed by rules they did not choose.

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.

I think that tension between ambition and execution is really what stays with me here. There are images in this film I will not forget in a hurry, and the core conceit is the sort of thing you wish more filmmakers had the nerve to attempt. But wishing a film had landed is not the same as saying it did. For all its visual confidence, Night of the Kings reminded me a little of a musician who can play beautifully but has not quite finished writing the song. Worth seeing if you have a taste for world cinema that swings for something genuinely unusual. Just don't be surprised if it leaves you more impressed by the attempt than satisfied by the result.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2020  | Watched: 2025-07-03

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Night of the Kings (2020) on YouTube

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