Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Night of the Kings’ on Hulu, an Otherworldly Prison Drama From Ivory Coast Director Philippe Lacote

Now on Hulu after being released on VOD in early 2021, Night of the Kings is a prison drama like no other. The film is from Philippe Lacote, the Ivory Coast director of the similarly acclaimed Run (2014) which, like Night of the Kings, was shortlisted for the foreign-language Oscar. And that’s for good reason — it’s an unorthodox story about a new inmate in a crazy penitentiary located far from the relative sanity of civilization. It feels as if it’s rooted in long-ago legend while also reflecting the present day — or it could just be a wild braintrip if you so choose.

NIGHT OF THE KINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The MACA prison can be found deep in the forest, but doesn’t seem likely to be found at all. It’s home to its own reality within the walls, where the inmates form their own society and leadership hierarchy as the guards watch, sometimes fascinated, as if a television drama just got especially suspenseful. The inside is ruled by a supreme master, known as the dangoro. He is Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu), and we first see him breathing into a facemask attached to an oxygen tank. Blackbeard isn’t his real name; nobody goes by their real name in here. Anyway, Blackbeard is ailing. And according to the MACA prison laws, when the dangoro is too sick to lead, he must commit suicide. He’s close, and somewhere between denial and acceptance.

But this isn’t Blackbeard’s story. I’ll backtrack a bit here. A young man in a yellow shirt is transported to the prison in the back of a pickup truck. He’s handcuffed to the rollbar. There’s fear, sadness, naivete in his eyes. He is Roman (Bakary Kone), although he isn’t quite Roman yet, because we never learn his outside name. He’s processed and sent inside, where the inmates bustle with an odd zealotry, as if on a drug that puts them all in a similarly upbeat, zealous headspace. Blackbeard calls them his lackeys. They spontaneously burst into song, harmonizing with each other. They have names like Half-Mad (Jean Cyrille Digbeu) and Razor Blade (Macel Anzian). They speak in almost manic tones, using the mystical phraseology of their dangoro. They torment a trans inmate named Sexy (Gbazi Yves Landry). They play cards and bathe naked in a room with a few buckets of water, scrubbing each other’s backs. Roman takes it all in. Maybe he doesn’t quite know what to make of this society. Surely, it all seems strange.

Roman has arrived at an interesting time. Blackbeard is on his way out, and the way potential dangoro Lass (Abdoul Karim Konate) speaks, one wonders if he’d rule with a more pragmatic tone. Blackbeard calls not-yet-Roman to him, and declares him Roman. If the moon rises red tonight, he says, Roman will be the new storyteller, and he will tell a story to everyone. Sure enough, the moon rises red. Roman is on the spot. He tells of a classmate named Zama King, and the lackeys respond as if he’s already a great legend. We see Zama King as a boy, then an adult, then a baby as Roman tells the story — in fragments, as the dynamic shifts of this change in power keep interrupting. There’s a rumor that the storyteller will be killed once he is done. Roman has the urge to keep going with the tale of a great queen with magical powers and hair that curves dramatically like the horns of an ibex, and a battle she wages, and the boy from the Lawless Quarter, the Zama King, who stands as a populist threat against those in power. Life and death, life and death.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It directly references Fernando Mereilles’ classic City of God. It also brings to mind both The Shawshank Redemption and Mati Diop’s Atlantics, which is saying something.

Performance Worth Watching: Kone is extraordinary, first as a cypher for the audience, looking upon this strange prison society with leery fascination. But his eyes soon show an uncanny blend of fear and confidence as he steps up to tell his story, and we get a sense that some greater power from within him is trumping his desparation.

Memorable Dialogue: Lass suggests a new way for the MACA prison: “The prisoners have to stop being our slaves and be our customers.”

Sex and Skin: Prisoner men bathing.

Our Take: Night of the Kings has an I-have-no-idea-what-I-just-watched-but-it-was-amazing thing going for it. We’re thrust into the bizarre reality of the prison, which has enough of a Heaven’s Gate vibe among the dangoro’s lackeys to be unsettling. Initially, we have no contextual cues as what the world outside is like. Could the prison be a concentrated microcosm of external society? Or is it just the inside of Col. Kurtz’s head, a place of madness wrought by isolation? Once the moon rises and it’s an otherworldly shade — well, we’re still not sure if the prison perspective is warped, or if the “magical realism” we see in visual depictions of Roman’s story is the truth of the REAL reality, if that makes sense.

I’m aware that this very well may not make sense. That’s OK. It’s hard to find your footing with Night of the Kings, and that’s surely intentional, because Lacote no doubt wants to keep us disoriented until we’re indoctrinated to the film’s fantastical tone and vibe, and then mesmerized by the hooting, hollering, chanting of men who have unconsciously become something other than themselves within these walls. Is this how cults are born? There’s an impulse to phrase every analytical point about the film as a question: Are these people and events symbolic? Are they metaphors for a societal dynamic that we who live on the other side of the world haven’t experienced? Are the names, characters and dramatic events, coupled with Lacote’s eccentric combination of abstraction, fantastical elements and harsh realism calculated or compulsive?

I’m not going to pretend to have answers, but the film is remarkably persuasive, even when it indulges a deeper strangeness with forays into wild displays of CGI. Lacote roots it in the African traditions of oral storytelling, making it feel very, very old while also being unlike most any film we’ve experienced. You’ll likely watch it with piquant curiosity. Thoroughly comprehending it seems to be beside the point — like Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, it makes one feel swept away, but at the same time very present and in the now.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The mystery and vitality of Night of the Kings makes it a near-singular viewing experience. It’s a challenge, but one worth taking.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Night of the Kings on Hulu