Bronx-Barbès

A drama set in the brutal world of Africa's ghettos, Bronx-Barbes opens with an introduction to Toussaint and Nixon, two teenaged friends who are out of work and commit petty thievery in order to eat. After accidentally murdering a ganglord one night, the two are taken under the wing of a group of thugs who populate the Bronx, a tough neighborhood run by a Mafia-like organization. Toussaint is able to scale the ranks of the neighborhood hierarchy, while Nixon ends up in jail for burglary, and is only released after Toussaint raises the money to free him. Eventually, the friends move on to Barbes, an even rougher neighborhood where they find that it takes more than just friendship to survive.

Our read · Bronx-Barbès (2000) reads as a sombre, kinetic, inventive drama · youth · ghetto entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.