The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“There’s a biting poetry, a fierce energy, a charge of raw emotion in this film. Above all, it has a rare quality: it has soul.”

François Forestier, Le Nouvel Observateur

This gripping drama, the first feature by Hamé and Ekoué, members of the leading French rap group La Rumeur, is set in the Paris neighbourhood of Pigalle. Nas is out on parole and required to work at his older brother Arezki’s bar, Le Prestige. But Nas has other plans: he wants to get back into promoting parties, and Le Prestige’s location, in heart of Paris’s bustling nightlife, is ideal. The brothers are on a collision course—and it started long ago. Offering an insider’s Paris-by-night portrait of a vibrant, quickly gentrifying urban neighborhood, with its African hairdressers, Algerian groceries, German tourists, neon sex shops, and street scams, the film is also, beneath its kinetic surface and groovy soundtrack, a profound reflection on the struggles and disappointments of two generations of Algerian immigrants in France.