2015 Cannes Critics’ Panel Day 9: Audiard Goes Off Deep-end with “Dheepan”

We’ll be better able to assess whether this Jacques Audiard’s seventh feature film was triumphant, faltered or flatlined when more results trickle in, but for the time being this looks to situate itself quality-wise underneath 2009’s Grand Prix winning A Prophet. It got his Cannes debut back in 1994 with Regarde Les Hommes Tomber in the Critics’ Week, saw 1996’s Un héros très discret land him Best Screenplay, and his last showing was for Rust & Bone in 2012. Starring relative unknowns in Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby, (supporting players also include Vincent Rottiers and Marc Zinga), Dheepan has all the earmarks from his other films: the immigrant story, criminal underpinnings, protagonist with odds against them, Paris, a visceral photography and on the tech side: a continued partnership with co-writer Thomas Bidegain. Make sure to click on the chart below for a larger version.