A power struggle has life or death consequences in Director Philippe Lacôte’s dramatic fantasy from Ivory Coast, Night of the Kings.
Set in Ivory Coast’s infamous MACA Prison — an institute ruled by its inmates — Lacôte’s film tells the story of an ailing inmate king who seeks to avoid having to end his own life by assigning a new ritual storyteller tasked with entertaining the population with tales during the red moon. When a young new prisoner is given the task, he is later warned that he must keep the story going all night long or forfeit his own life. Night of the Kings was the official submission of Ivory Coast for the Best International Feature Film category of the 93rd Academy Awards and Lacôte won the “Amplify Voices” Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.
Following the Special Projects Committee’s Global Cinema Series screening in the DGA’s Los Angeles Theater on Juy 21, Lacôte joined Global Cinema Series Co-Chair Alex Stapleton (Hello, Privilege. It's Me, Chelsea) via video from Ivory Coast to discuss the making of Night of the Kings.
During the conversation Lacôte revealed his thoughts on depictions of violence. “Night of the Kings is a fight between violence, words, stories and who is stronger. When they lynched the real Zama King, they put the image on social media. I asked myself, 'After two years of civil war, what's happened in this society?' So always, I try to not show violence, but ask something about violence. When Blackbeard says to Roman, 'It's important for us to try and tell your stories. It's enough.' So, I play with the atmosphere of violence, but it's not useful for me to show it. It's more important to think about violence."
Lacôte’s other directorial works include the features Run and African Metropolis; the documentaries Chronicles of War in the Ivory Coast and Cairo Hours; and episodes of the documentary mini-series, Slavery Routes.
You can listen to Lacôte's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
See video from this event in the gallery below.
About The Special Projects Committee
Special Projects is the educational and cultural arm of the Directors Guild of America, providing its members opportunities for creative exchange to advance their craft and celebrate the achievements of directors and their teams.