Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

What a difference context makes. Night of Kings is a film that comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast, the history of which clearly informs a great deal of shorthand likely understood by viewers in that country. So much of this is so little known and understood by a white, American viewer like myself, it’s difficult to take a critical look at it in any truly meaningful way. The disparity here is vast and bordering on pathetic: I rarely have reason to consider the vastness of European colonization all across Africa (indeed, all of two African nations are widely considered never to have been colonized, and barely even in those cases), let alone the reason French is the primary language spoken in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city. Here in the U.S., we naturally tend to focus our conceptions of colonization on the English. But of course the English weren’t the only ones to spread across the world this way, and French is spoken in many African countries, several of them with it as their official language.

I barely have an understanding of the French. It’s not that hard to understand how, even after a country manages independence, the colonizing language and culture can become part of a permanent mixture: this happens all over the world. Night of Kings is set in a prison isolated in the jungle of Ivory Coast, with its very own, specific culture within that broader context, itself seemingly very specific from a vastly outsider perspective. The story that unfolds is a story within a story, with allegorical elements that just inevitably flew over my head.

I do not say all this to dissuade anyone from watching the film. Perhaps the opposite, in fact: the more we see stuff like this, the more we retain, and the greater understanding we gain of the rich cultural diversity of our planet. And to be sure, there is still plenty here to understand; it’s not like a prison setting is some exotic idea. This place, called MACA (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction d'Abidjan, or “Abdidjan House of Arrest and Correction”), functions as a prison only insofar as the inmates cannot get out. Otherwise, the rule themselves, and as we are informed at the beginning of the film, tradition dictates that when one leader gets too sick to “govern,” he must take his own life.

So: the current leader, named after the pirate Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu) is indeed ill. He buys himself some time, however, by using another tradition, wherein the “red moon” dictates a storyteller must be chosen, who must stand in the middle of the entire prison population and entertain them with stories. Blackbeard chooses the young, brand new arrival, given the name Roman (Bakary Koné), who slowly realizes the gravity of his situation, and keeps the inmates rapt the entire night.

Roman’s storytelling takes up maybe half to two thirds of the film’s roughly ninety minute run time, and this is indeed where Night of the Kings gets the most interesting. The inmates crowd around him, at first skeptical of his weakly constructed tales, and later absorbed as he gets better at telling them. Writer-director Philippe Lacôte eventually cuts to the story being told as part of the very narrative of this film, but he does this sparingly. It’s a testament to his skill as a director and storyteller that even when he spends a lot of time with the camera on Roman, several of the inmates often reenacting his scenes right there as thought it’s an impromptu live play, Night of the Kings is no less compelling.

It seems worth noting that this movie was filmed in Ivory Coast, and with all of one single exception, has a quite large, all-Black cast. Indeed, they make up so much of the majority, and the story is so specific to this location, the script makes no mention of race whatsoever. Just one of the inmates is a white guy, somewhat older and balding, considered by the rest of the inmates to be “half mad.” He carries a chicken around and makes predictions like some kind of magical shaman. It’s hard to say whether this was deliberate, but considering the longstanding Hollywood trope of a minority person being relegated to some kind of supernatural position, this is an interesting reversal of the idea.

Differing factions of the prison population are on the brink of war, and Roman, by sheer fate, winds up playing a key role in whether or not order will prevail or chaos will reign. Night of the Kings works quite well even on a straightforward level, but has many layers of meaning that left me compelled to do some minor levels of research. With this movie, it seems the more you know, the richer the story—which, as the narrative cutaways to Roman’s story gets more elaborate, moves through blended genres from drama to straight up fantasy. Navigating this movie’s changing narrative landscape, even when I was lost, I felt guided.

Overall: B+