The Guardian wrote:
Romain Gavras’s new drama-thriller is about racism, violence and injustice in the Paris banlieues – broadly in the tradition of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables. It’s spectacular and immersive, with a sensational opening. But it gets bogged down in its own one-note, one-tempo uproar and open-ended parkour camerawork – impressive though that is – and suffers from a number of sneaky false-flag get-out clauses that feel like a cop-out.

It tells the story of four brothers of Algerian origin in the same tough Athena housing estate. Idir has just been killed by a bunch of cops – or guys in cop uniforms – for daring to talk back, an atrocity captured on a viral video. Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is a decorated army hero, Moktar (Ouassini Embarek) is a coke-dealing gangster and Karim (Sami Slimane) is a local guy seething with rage at his brother’s racist murder.

The movie begins with Abdel giving a press conference, flanked by police and politicians, appealing for calm following Idir’s killing and asking people to join him in a “silent march” of peaceful protest. Some hope. In any other movie, that press conference would be a bland opener, a piece of narrative throat-clearing preceding any number of dull dialogue scenes laying out the issues. But not this one. Karim is there at the press conference: he throws a Molotov cocktail at the assembled cops and then, leading hundreds of Athena guys, launches an extraordinary Assault on Precinct 13-style attack on the police station, stealing weapons and a police van before retreating to his inner-city stronghold. This breathtaking action sequence looks like the Battle of Helm’s Deep.

Yet after that audacious coup, the movie loses its dramatic shape as the situation between the three brothers is sketched in. The introduction of a conspiracy theory subplot feels like fence-sitting on the issue of police racism, and the film also brings in a rather perfunctory white “terrorist” figure called Sébastien (Alexis Manenti), who appears to be there to differentiate the brothers from truly fanatical and unjustified violence. The film is very reliant on the news on the TV in the corner to underline the larger, national implications.

Athena is forthright and bold in its way: that opening sequence is a barnstormer. But there is not much human complexity or human authenticity in the drama that follows.

Athena.2022.1080p.NF.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.x264-KHN.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 39 min
Size: 	2.35 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 606 kb/s
BPP: 	0.052
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch E-AC-3 JOC @ 768 kb/s (French)

https://nitro.download/view/5A1BB08882C9C3C/Athena.2022.1080p.NF.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.x264-KHN.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Ukrainian

The post Romain Gavras – Athena (2022) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

OUR DAY WILL COME Review

by Todd Brown, September 12, 2010 1:53 PM
Though it remains to be seen whether he will be loved our hated by audiences at large – and both seem equally likely – there is no doubt at all that Our Day Will Come announces the arrival of Romain Gavras as a significant new talent in world cinema. Though working with a very different style, Gavras embraces the same sort of fuck you abrasiveness that has made Lars Von Trier such a polarizing presence on the world scene and we should expect nothing less from Gavras.

A cynical outsider epic, Our Day Will Come is the story of Remy and Patrick, a pair of misfits joined together by their dislike of society and their red hair. Patrick (Vincent Cassel) is a psychotherapist sick to death of listening to the banalities of people’s problems and pretending to care. He is cynical in the extreme and seemingly desperate for anything he can manipulate for his own entertainment. And that object comes in the form of Remy, a boy in his late teens from a shitty family that treats him horribly who has been ostracized for his entire life, other children fixating on the color of his hair as the prime fodder for their teasing. Once the two meet sparks fly immediately.

Patrick stumbles across Remy as the youth runs down the road away from his home, where he has just assaulted his mother and sister. On a whim Patrick picks the boy up and offers a ride and begins to play, his training giving him ample skills to read and manipulate Remy’s obvious insecurities. It begins with Patrick winning Remy’s trust, offering to help him, but the help soon turns to Patrick picking fights that Remy cannot avoid and pushing the young man into ever more extreme and uncomfortable situations.

But what Patrick does not anticipate, perhaps, is that his goading will unlock something in Remy, a desperation for acceptance fused with a facility for violence, and before long Remy has taken charge of the situation and forced Remy to take him on an increasingly sociopathic road trip to the ferry that will take them to Ireland where Remy dreams he will assume the mantle of a sort of redhead messiah.

There is absolutely no doubt that Gavras is a wildly self indulgent film maker, one prone to ranting and bursts of rage. But there is also no doubt that Gavras has the skills and intelligence to back that indulgence up, his debut feature constantly writhing and twisting itself into new, unexpected shapes. He is bold and brash and one wonders if Remy is not simply a replacement for himself in the film with the brilliant Vincent Cassel – who turns in an absolutely bravura performance here while also serving as a producer – egging him on and goading him ever farther from the sidelines.

Not quite a genre film, not quite an arthouse film, Our Day Will Come is a powerful hybrid with a unique, sharply focused eye and a restlessly misanthropic sense of creativity. In many ways Our Day Will Come is this year’s Ex Drummer, an instant cult title in the making.

Our.Day.Will.Come.2010.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3-TBB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 23mn
Size:	3.27 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1024x436
Aspect ratio:	2.35:1
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	5 057 Kbps
Audio
French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/08B4166F99ABFEF/Our.Day.Will.Come.2010.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3-TBB.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, German, Portuguese

The post Romain Gavras – Notre jour viendra aka Our Day Will Come (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
Extraordinary things always happen when unexpected. During the 18 months Justice spent touring, “extraordinary” didn’t necessarily mean “amazing”, or “great”, (though it sometimes did) but “surreal”, “weird”, “horrendous”, “fascinating”, “paranormal”, etc. To cut a long story short, it means that without anyone to film you twenty-four/seven, no one will believe or get the essence of every moment you’d like to tell them about. So as Justice were about to tour the USA for the second time, multi-awarded directors and intimate friends of the band Romain Gavras and So-Me taped every second of that 3 week tour that looks like it lasted 3 years. This documentary isn’t a report of a Justice live show (the audio CD is here for that), but is all about the extraordinary things that can happen when a bunch of frogs get dropped in dreamy America.

justiceacrosstheuniverse_x264.mkv
General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 4mn
Size:	1.21 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Not met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	720x464 ~> 824x464
Aspect ratio:	16:9
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	2 197 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/2B870454EE3DDF1/justiceacrosstheuniverse_x264.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/C6685FD5020F0CF/actusubs.srt
or
https://nitro.download/view/51DE17EB82EC8C2/A_Cross_the_Universe.avi
https://nitro.download/view/93619262578F5B2/A_Cross_the_Universe.srt

Language(s):French,English
Subtitles:French (the mkv version),English (the avi version)

The post Gaspard Augé, Xavier de Rosnay, Romain Gavras & So-Me – A Cross the Universe (2008) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
A small-time dealer dreams of another life but can’t afford it. To escape, he must accept one last job involving Spain, drugs, the Illuminati and his overbearing mother.

Le.monde.est.a.toi.AKA.The.World.Is.Yours.2018.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 40mn
Size:	2.46 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1024x428
Aspect ratio:	2.40:1
Frame rate:	24.000 fps
Bit rate:	3 064 kb/s
Audio
French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/86049939894F81A/Le.monde.est.a.toi.AKA.The.World.Is.Yours.2018.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, French

The post Romain Gavras – Le monde est à toi AKA The World Is Yours (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.