« Night of the Kings » is a dramatic and fantastic film that lasts 93 minutes. Of French-Ivorian-Canadian-Senegalese nationality, it is co-written and directed by Philippe Lacôte and released in 2020.
In 2019, Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Bekolo said at a masterclass at the EMERGENCE film festival in Togo that the secret to the success of his own films lies in building a story around a humans group living in the forest and having their own codes.
So, the story of this movie by Philippe Lacote also takes place in the heart of a huge forest in a prison unique in the world, governed by its own codes. The head of the prison, the aging and sickly kingpin Blackbeard, is increasingly challenged at MACA (Abidjan prison, one of the most overcrowded in West Africa).

To maintain his power, he reverts to the tradition of « Roman », a ritual that forces somebody to tell stories for one night at the risk of losing his life. This beautiful adventure introduces us to an innocent and fearful young man who, thrown to the slaughterhouse, has only GOD and his own storytelling cunning to try to survive.

The film takes us back to the imperial past of the Ivory Coast through wars of kingdoms, political crisis and especially the scourge of the invisible. Moreover, Zama King, the founding king of the invisible, is only the fruit of the socio-political realities of his country; as what, we create our own demons.

« The novel » is neither a murderer nor an invisible one, but just a childhood friend of the king.
At the beginning of his story, his fear led him to affirm his faith, but noting that the prisoners do not cling to his story every time he mentions GOD, he decides to confess his sins. We will understand his psychology better later towards the end of the film. Through inscriptions on a wall in MACA, his prophecy is revealed: « if God says yes no one can say no ».

Finally, ‘the novel’ comes out and raises his head, not only to contemplate the sunrise that symbolizes his survival, but above all to thank his God for saving him. As for the prisoners, apart from the fact that they don’t like to talk about God, they hate political facts, even though they are the fruits of them.

This masterpiece plunges us into a fantastic world where reality is intertwined with the lies of the storyteller who has his fairy and his madman. The film is especially full of choreography, acrobatics, songs ….
The tale that relates the fight of the initiates between the queen and her brother gives it a strong African value.
The story is quite well conducted by a child in his game by its accuracy to express fear, innocence, and especially to fight against death.
The movement in the frame gives life to the film to hide the fiction and let us travel freely and naturally.
In particular the images within the Maca on the screen plunge us into the illusion of a real prison.
The main idea of the director is to show the internal functioning of the prison as a society. For him, whose mother was a political prisoner in MACA and who himself had directed many film clubs in prisons in France, the prison is this other kingdom where kings and princes rule with their various laws and codes. The film is distributed by Canal +.

Kosi SESSI

Correction : Ndeye Marème Diop