Night of the Kings
La Nuit Des Rois

Synopsis

The writer Joan Didion once said we tell ourselves stories in order to live, and this frenetic feature takes that aphorism up to eleven. A pickpocket enters a notorious prison expecting the worst, only to be given new garb and a new name: Roman. The prisoners are ruled less by guards than rites, and on a red-mooned night, Roman is to tell them tales—what awaits him after is unknown.

With Roman’s desperate tale of Zama King, an outlaw who witnesses various periods in Ivorian history, Night of the Kings not only pays homage to West African griot storytelling. From pantomime and mythology, down to the expressions Roman wears, it testifies to the ability of fictions to write themselves, no matter how forsaken its authors may seem.