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Dheepan
Award-winning French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) considers the flight of immigrants in his own country in this harrowing account of desperation and deception. It's based in part on the real-life experiences of lead actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a former child soldier who fled Sri Lanka in the 1980s. In Audiard's film, Sivadhasan (Jesuthasan) is a Tamil fighter embroiled in the bitter and bloody civil war, which claimed the lives of his beloved wife and child. Sivadhasan realises that he is destined to stand on the losing side and resolves to leave his homeland for a brighter future in Europe. In order to claim asylum, Sivadhasan needs a passport and a family, so he acquires the documentation of a dead man called Dheepan and a bogus wife Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and nine-year-old daughter Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). The surrogate family boards a boat for Paris where they are granted temporary visas and relocated to the northern suburbs of the French capital. Sivadhasan quickly learns that France is not the promised land and the streets of Paris are populated by bad people, who would kill to survive.
