MOVIE REVIEW

Dounia is a young woman living in a ghetto who is thirsty for power and money. With the help of her best friend Maimouna, she decides to follow Rebecca, a respected dealer ; but her meeting with a sensitive dancer named Djigui is going to change her everyday life. This is the kind of film which you cannot be indifferent to. You leave the cinema as if you had just received a big slap across your face. That's raw, that's powerful, that is just pure French cinema. Divines is the first feature film of Houda Benyamina who received « the Gold Camera » in the 69th Cannes film festival. The film suceeds thank to two young and full-of-life actresses Oulaya Amamra and Déborah Lukumuena who succeed in giving their characters hope in the terrible social reality of ghetto in which they are. They just have the right tone not to fall in a caricatural vision of ghetto life, and Houda Benyamina seems to have understood that. She is torn between the disappointed reality which is given to her character, and the beautiful imagination they have to hold on. She just shows us a kind view on life in which drugs and religion are mixed. This movie is strong and magnificently describes the hard reality of the youth in ghettos without offering a morale message in the end, as La Haine of Mathieu Kassovitz did before in his time for his generation.