rgsalinas Winner of the 2016 Audience Award for New Auteurs at AFI Fest, DIVINES is a feature film loaded with emotion that pivots from one side of the spectrum to the other. It is not a coming of age story but rather, a story about two girls that are best friends and the lead's, Dounia, conflict of her soul. Director Hounda delivers a touching piece of cinema that blurred my emotion of how I feel about the lead character played by Oulaya Amamra. The protagonist's circumstances and choices make for a masterful narrative story that ultimately leaves you feeling the characters emptiness and guilt.Dounia is an ambitious girl who lives in a gypsy camp in Paris with her mother, who is considered the camp slut. The fact that she is a bastard child, affects her temperament when she is amidst her peers. This is a burden that Dounia carries around with her that shapes her attitude and choices. The only person in her life that brings light and joy is her friend Maimouna. With ties to her Islamic faith, Maimouna is positioned to have better sense than Dounia. However, paired together their childlike wonder and fantasy of becoming rich is enough to lure them into participating in a world of licentious behavior.Hounda's directing, clever scene selection and storytelling through the lens, created the opportunity for me to participate in Dounia's and Maimouna childlike wonder. Throughout the film I am constantly changing my mind on how I feel about the two friends. Credit to Hounda use of cleaver devices in her narrative story telling in particular the cinematography. Accompanied by brilliant acting from Oulaya. Hounda sister in real life, Hounda visuals brought me in when the girls were fantasizing about driving a Ferrari. She successfully captured their childlike wonder that allowed me to imagine alongside the characters as if I was a child riding in the car with them. This creative storytelling provided me the opportunity to care for the girls despite their wicked and edacious actions.The pacing of the film is superb doubling down on Dounia's disturbed circumstances and poor decision making motivated by disease only money could cure. I often found my emotion being teeter- tottered. On one side, my inner child wants Dounia and Maimouna to succeed in obtaining the riches they desire, even through indecent means. On the other end of the spectrum, Hounda pulls me back to reality through the unfolding of each scene. The harsh reality of Dounia's choices surrounded by the reality of a young girl involved in street life and her motivation of easy virtue slowly pulled me back ultimately lead me to judge the character as immoral.In the end I was left feeling empathy for the characters. This narrative is a great example to me that fairy tales don't come true. The happy ending presented for Dounia was just that a fairy tale. Her choices fueled by her ambition for money lead her down all the wrong paths that striped her of her essence. The characters motivation provided her heart and soul with meaning but ended up being the very thing that left her heartless and empty in the end.

PeterPan158 Wow! What I expected to be a medicare classic sentimental a girl-from-the-ghetto story, turned up to be an extraordinary experience of incredibly acted, beautifully complex, unconventionally artistic movie. If this is the director's first feature movie, I am genuinely looking for next one.The story is about a 15-year-old Muslim girl called Dounia and her black friend Maimouna that both grow up in a poor migrant superb of Paris.They have both different characters and family situation, but they both share their insecurities and hopes with each other openly and you can feel the strength of their influence on each other even when it seems like they paths split.They are both clueless teenage girls, that feel like they deserve more in life than what they were given by their parents or society. And it's Dounia that is more willing to risk and fight for that better future. The relationship dynamic is fascinating to watch and very well acted. There is also interesting and potentially romantic (?) relationship between Dounia and a guy who is a dancer, and whose artistic aspirations in dancing is confusing her (and her own value system). And what's more, her friend Maimonua doesn't seem to be so impressed with him as Dounia, so she acts very ambiguously toward him and even sees him as weak, even though she is not sure that what she sees as a weakness is actually a weakness after all. This split between her contradictory emotions is amazingly well acted (in my opinion by a rising star) young actress Oulaya Amamra.The ghetto, lack of meaning, lack of guidance and respected adult authorities, lack of social (economic) opportunities and feeling of being an alien in someone else's society is the true antagonist of the story.It drives Dounia (and Maimonua follows her in admiration) to make naive and bad choices, but at the same time you feel something very authentic and even admirable in her drive to find the most accessible way out of her frustrating situation. As there seems to be no adult that understands her feelings, she relies on her best friend Maimonua feedback and evaluation of her. But they both can only know, what they can learn from their surrounding culture and significant adults around themselves - who also seem clueless and desperate, so why should Dounia trust them at all? She has an immature drunk mother and no father. So when she drops out of school and start selling drugs, the world looks like it belongs to her (and her best friend), unable to see inevitable consequences of the path she puts herself and their friendship in.And as the movie progress, you ask yourself how much she can get away with and will she finally learn harsh life lessons on her own or will the unusual relationship with the dancer help her to see beyond distorted values she desperately tries to believe in? It is a matter of taste, I guess, but a Golden globe nomination, 10 minutes standing ovation and subsequent win at Cannes festival is, in my opinion, well deserved. Besides I read that the "self-thought" director Houda Benyamina herself grew up in the type of suburb she captures in this movie, so you can't accuse her of over-dramatization or stereotyping.I've seen A Man called Ove (2016) and Toni Erdmann (2016) which are both nominated for 2017 Oscars for foreign movies, but I think Divines deserves it more. I personally, put Divines to my Top 2016 list of movies.Highly recommend.

nick94965 This is one very affecting movie, a type of film that fills you with a sense of real people feeling real emotions --nothing is fake, all the characters and all their needs are as real and painful as it gets. And just as in life, nothing is resolved in a satisfying ending.The lead actress is one very ambitious young lady, Oulaya Amamra, who will make her mark on cinematic history soon, but you might want to catch her in her early stage to see how she progresses quickly to Meryl Streep (or at least Jennifer Lawrence) status. Her character's name is Dounia, and she is a daughter of the town slut in a Roma (Gypsy) camp.Her best friend, Maimounia, a black girl, daughter of a Muslim priest, is as lovable as they come. The two of them conspire to become rich. Even though they achieve the goal, it eludes them in a way that is completely unfair, yet realistic. There is no simple resolution, and therefore, the film is just like life: it is completely and utterly unfair.Although the plot seems simple, it is extremely more complex and a summary of the action doesn't do justice to the story. Dounia has a love-hate relationship with a male dancer that takes too much away from the rest of the film, and the scenes of the dancer are way over long and unnecessary, but thankfully it is the relationship that she has with her best female friend that is the true heart of the film.To say more would detract from one's enjoyment of the twists and turns that ensue during the course of the film. Rest assured, you will be glad you spent time in the company of the actresses and the female director of this very impressive film.

jean-philippe monteiro This is a welcome sight. This is not an easy one. Scene after scene, the characters, the settings, the relationship, each and every element comes in your face with incredible strength; from classroom argument to daughter-mother interaction, nothing is easy and nothing doesn't hurt. And for all that, the movie still manages to be fun, to make you laugh (albeit often at someone's painful expenses). Praise must of course go towards the main character, surprisingly multifaceted, rich and intense in about any moment of the film. She will draw you into her hopes, values and experience, her very own; morals, logic, conventions be damned! The talent from the young cinematographer at work here is to project all this with that incredible force; you will be happy when the characters are, you will cry when they do. And you will hope with them of a better tomorrow, however twisted. The synopsis here doesn't do justice to the scenario, this is much more about survival, and progress, only with the meagre supply of solutions and resources available to the heroes where they where born, in the limited scope of perspectives such life can offer them. They will not accept their fate, they will fight it, and we will be entranced by them.