Divines

Oulaya Amamra, the lead who is the young sister of the director, is enormously promising in this brutal coming-of-age tale, Add her counterpart, Déborah Lukumuena and you one of my favourite best dialogue/friendship duets: "He eyed you up like a Bic Mac during Ramadan."

'Divines' joins the lofty 'Les Misérables' and 'La Haine' as our best views into French inequality. It's possible that those three equal or exceed the best ghetto crime dramas that the USA has to offer (I'm excluding 'The Wire' and 'The Corner' because those dirty beauties are series).

Wonderfully, 'Divines' gives us a female perspective, going much deeper than Céline Sciamma did with 'Girlhood'.

'Divine' made me laugh and excited but the inevitable collapse gut-wrenched me because I know that darkness is a reflection of our real world where inequality, for most, is a living death sentence. That's the present and intensifying world hierarchy.

It's unfair to viewers that Director Houda Benyamina's debut hasn't had a follow-up the past 6 years. The good news is that she has received funding for 'All For One' which will hopefully appear in 2023.