Roman (Koné Bakary), a young new arrival at a violent prison, anchors Philippe Lacôte’s “Night of the Kings.” We see the action through his eyes, as he faces an unruly bunch of prison mates. However, what’s most peculiar about this prison, set somewhere on the ivory coast, is how bound by Griot traditions it is. On his first day, our young protagonist is assigned to head ceremonial duties. He is forced to tell a story all night. It’s customary for a rookie to do so, while the convicts surround him and judge his storytelling abilities. Meanwhile, a side story is also being told as the headmaster, the man who runs things, Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu), has to deal with countless assassination attempts. Lacôte’s film is messy and maybe that's the point of the narrative. There are so many things that need to be said here about the Ivory Coast’s prison system, the political corruption, the emergence of the country on a national stage, that it gets lost in its ability to, coincidentally enough, tell its story effectively. Roman chooses the origin tale of Zama King, a gangster who roamed Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city, to woo his audience of inmates. Lacôte uses flashbacks to immerse the viewer into the tale being told. It’s sometimes interrupted by inmates heckling Roman whenever they don’t like the direction the story is going. “It doesn’t even make sense!” a prisoner yells, and one can get that exact same feeling watching Lacôte’s film. Don’t get me wrong, it’s made with unadorned passion, but feels hectic as hell, jammed with an innumerable amount of love for country and cinema. Despite the flaws, it suggests Lacôte as a talent to watch.
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