Won the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. About an ex Tamil Tiger who goes to France after the catastrophic defeat. He is accompanied by a woman & child who pretend to be his wife & daughter. He has to adopt a new identity as he was one of the few leaders to survive. In France after moving around he gets a job as a caretaker in a block of apartments in an estate run by drugs gangs. He just wants a peaceful life but comes into conflict with the drug dealers. The warrior within has to emerge once moreThe story has been done before, in many Westerns; Ken Loach has done it in Scotland but Jacques Audiard ("A Prophet") puts his own stamp on this interpretation of the old tale. Really moving. 9/10.

I will try to make a brief analysis on storytelling, since it is the story and the storytelling that make this movie beautiful, probably brought the golden palm.That a film which shows the very low lives in France, has received the attention, that is also worth note-taking. The story is smoothly developed without too much exaggerations. Three people join each other to make a good picture for a proper refugee application, and through time they regain their confidence and become a real family, showing the other wreaks in the modern cities. It genuinely touches our today's world issues. It well documents for the future generations to explain our time. While in some places over the world like Sri Lanka, Ruanda, Syrian Kurdish regions mass killings take place, in the western urbans we have gangs and other crimes to worry. Dheepan is not depicting freaky situations like sexual harassment, very rich lives contrasted with the very poor life of the protagonist ( A cliché in a luxury restaurant would have been disturbing in the movie) . Also, usually in that kind of lives you could see many sexual, material and power abuses. But the movie do not touch these kind of elements, which help you focus on other elements in the movie. Probably much people after the movie will feel the life of the "family" very decent and proud and appreciate the efforts of receiving countries.

Well done! Filmography was often beautiful with a touch of surrealism. Plot and characters have plenty of layers. The complexities of escaping a warring home place so different from the one you land in, not understanding what they say, or why. The lead characters were complex and gripping, especially the woman. At the end I had to ask, what does it mean? The mixing of the terror, violence, and ludicrousness of the war at home and the drug gangster war. Unusual emotional depth in a film, and still leave you hopeful.

"Men and women are immigrants in each other's worlds." Yakov SmirnoffWhile the media is awash with stories of displaced persons, especially in Europe and Asia, the engrossing film, Dheepan, depicts the struggles of a small "family" from Sri Lanka that could as easily stand for emigrants anywhere. The titular hero (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a former Tamil Tiger trying to leave his violent past by emigrating first to France, then to England.The fact that the 1983-2009 Sri Lankan Civil War is closing, with Tamil losing, helps to propel the story and give credence to his flight. The story is fascinating as Deephan joins with a woman and a young girl, both previously unknown to him, to leave the country seeming to be a family. Just watching the three maneuver themselves out of India to a Parisian suburb is drama enough, but writer-director Jacques Audiard carefully shows how the new family gradually becomes a functioning, loving trio.However, it's not at all easy as Dheepan's new job is as caretaker for a housing complex that has a drug operation in one part of it. Although Dheepan tries to stay out of the way, the old Tiger surfaces, and he must fight for his independence as well as the safety and trust of his "wife," Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan).That fight for family love and survival becomes just as compelling as the struggle of the Tamil Tigers for independence in Northern Sri Lanka. What makes this Cannes Palme d'Or winner so emotionally magnetizing is the quiet way the characters grab hold of your affection, in a sense inching their way into your heart because of the sincerity of their purpose and the charisma of the actors.Besides the microcosmic attachment to a family in progress, the story, again quietly, references ethnic challenges worldwide as Yalini dons a headscarf to fit into the predominantly Muslim population, an artifice similar to her faking being wife to Deephan and mother to Illavaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). Yet there is nothing deceptive about the power of this story to make universal the need to find a home, and the concomitant importance of a nurturing love.