This one is an involving companion piece to Ladji Li's 2019 LES MISERABLES - immigrants struggle while the gendarmes hover round their mass housing. Plausibly eleven year old Maël Rouin Berrandou can't wait to quit school but his three brothers make dodgy role models and their comatose mother in the bedroom needs constant care.
The pressure is to become a pizza delivery boy but, while painting the corridor on a bogus educational leisure project at the school where he's still enrolled, Berrandou encounters Judith (CAMILLE REWINDS) Chemla's small singing class, recognising the Italian opera arias his late father used to play.
Between going look out for drug runs, beach soccer and getting roughed up by his family, our hero edges towards being an Arab Billy Elliot. The plausible surface, engaging characters and inconclusive ending all give this conviction. Despite the grim material it manages to be lively entertainment.
Skillful handling uses available light and real locations effectively giving the impression of a realistic texture.
