Dheepan

When a former Tamil Tiger, a woman and a girl pretend to be a family to escape the civil war in Sri Lanka and obtain a refugee status in France, they end up living in a Paris suburb. While hardly knowing each other, they try to build a life together.

In a refugee camp former Tamil Tiger Sivadhasan gets his hands on a passport belonging to Dheepan, a fellow countryman who passed away. He steals the latter’s identity and creates a fake family with Yalini, a woman he hardly knows, and Illayaal, an orphan girl from the camp, in order to obtain political asylum in Europe.

Together they travel to Europe, ending up in a dreary Paris suburb where drug gangs rule. Dheepan gets a job as a janitor and Yalini finds work taking care of an old man. But building a new life with people you do not actually know, in a place full of criminals, turns out to be a major challenge.

Fascinating migrant drama by Jacques Audiard (Un prophète, De rouille et d’os) that won the Golden Palm at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.