Vonia Dheepan (2015) A fake family, Forced together to survive, Able to become, A real family with love. From the blood and death Found in Sri Lanka, To hope found in France, But in between is much pain. Language barriers, Abuse, gangsters, violence, Even from back home, Emissaries sent to them. Trying to forget, Struggling with PTSD, Working hard daily, Striving to overcome hate, But with so many Life threatening obstacles. Three captivating And extremely insightful Character studies, Father, Mother, and Daughter. Fake identities, Forced to live with two strangers. Although similar, Each has their unique struggle With acclimation. Struggling with PTSD, Tempting London friend, Being accepted at school. Audiard gives us Portrait of resilience With a charming cast, But you have to overlook Excessive blood, death, Suffering and violence, Political views, Loss of character focus, Easy ending like a bow. Choka (long poem) was an epic storytelling form of poetry from the 1st to the 13th century, known as the Waka period. The choka is an unrhymed poem with the 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7...7 syllable format (any odd number line length with alternating five and seven syllable lines that ends with an extra seven syllable line). #Choka #PoemReview

Tom Dooley This is about three people of Tamil origin thrown together by the harsh vagaries of war, who then escape from Sri Lanka to France. There Dheepan gets a job as a caretaker to some blocks of flats that seem to be inhabited by a lot of low level criminals.The film follows the travails and hardships that they all face and how they stand up to them and bring them all closer together. ***Plot Spoiler Ahead *** Now this is from French film director Jacques Audiard whose last film 'Rust and Bone' I really liked but it was over sensational where the Killer Whales were concerned (they have never bitten a trainers legs off ever in captivity) and once again he takes liberties here but what did it for me was the fairy tale ending that just acts as an advert to refugees to flock to England every time they want to make it big in our multi cultural Utopia. He should really go to Hollywood if he wants to make this type of film.

jdesando "Men and women are immigrants in each other's worlds." Yakov SmirnoffWhile the media is awash with stories of displaced persons, especially in Europe and Asia, the engrossing film, Dheepan, depicts the struggles of a small "family" from Sri Lanka that could as easily stand for emigrants anywhere. The titular hero (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a former Tamil Tiger trying to leave his violent past by emigrating first to France, then to England.The fact that the 1983-2009 Sri Lankan Civil War is closing, with Tamil losing, helps to propel the story and give credence to his flight. The story is fascinating as Deephan joins with a woman and a young girl, both previously unknown to him, to leave the country seeming to be a family. Just watching the three maneuver themselves out of India to a Parisian suburb is drama enough, but writer-director Jacques Audiard carefully shows how the new family gradually becomes a functioning, loving trio.However, it's not at all easy as Dheepan's new job is as caretaker for a housing complex that has a drug operation in one part of it. Although Dheepan tries to stay out of the way, the old Tiger surfaces, and he must fight for his independence as well as the safety and trust of his "wife," Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan).That fight for family love and survival becomes just as compelling as the struggle of the Tamil Tigers for independence in Northern Sri Lanka. What makes this Cannes Palme d'Or winner so emotionally magnetizing is the quiet way the characters grab hold of your affection, in a sense inching their way into your heart because of the sincerity of their purpose and the charisma of the actors.Besides the microcosmic attachment to a family in progress, the story, again quietly, references ethnic challenges worldwide as Yalini dons a headscarf to fit into the predominantly Muslim population, an artifice similar to her faking being wife to Deephan and mother to Illavaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). Yet there is nothing deceptive about the power of this story to make universal the need to find a home, and the concomitant importance of a nurturing love.

Howard Schumann The 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009), a conflict between the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the Hindu Tamil minority in which 200,000 people were killed, including tens of thousands of Tamil civilians forms the backdrop for French director Jacques Audiard's searing refugee drama Dheepan. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, it is the story of three Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka newly settled in Paris, their adjustment to an often unwelcoming environment, and the bond they form based on mutual need and acceptance of the others pain.Like Audiard's previous film, Rust and Bone, it is raw and visceral, yet also a film of lyricism and sensitivity. Though the film seems to draw a parallel between the war in Sri Lanka and social unrest in France, it is a fictional film and, according to Audiard, is not intended to mirror the actual conditions of refugees in France which he believes has been mostly welcoming. Written by Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré and photographed by Eponine Momenceau, the film opens in Sri Lanka as the Tamil fighter Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a novelist and a former Tamil Tiger himself), whose cause faces defeat, lays palm leaves across the corpses on a funeral pyre before burning his own military fatigues.The scene shifts to Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), a young woman attempting to ensure her passage out of the country by finding a young girl to pose as her daughter, She finds Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), a girl who can pass for nine, and takes her to where Dheepan (an assumed name) is being given the passports of three dead people. Assuming new identities, the three pretend to be a family escaping persecution in Sri Lanka and are relocated to France where they are employed as caretakers of a housing project in the Paris suburbs. It is a locale reminiscent of the projects in Mathieu Kassovitz', La Haine, where drug dealing and urban decay are pervasive.Their guide Youssouf (Marc Zinga) gives them a tour but the instructions, in a language they do not understand, do not register. Youssouf skirts around the problem of the drug dealers who congregate in another block across the courtyard, only telling him to wait until they leave before beginning to clean. As Illayal goes to school to learn French and Yalini is assigned to cook and clean for an elderly man whose nephew Brahim (Vincent Rottiers) is one of the local gang leaders, the film traces the gradual assimilation of the family, their overriding desire for connection, not only to the language and customs, but to each other. Though the film is restrained with moments of tenderness and humor as well as anger and frustration, underneath there is a growing tension.Violence erupts when Dheepan, who suffers from PTSD, draws a white line across the courtyard that they are not to cross and it has a jarring effect though, to me, not out of sync with the film's setup and exploration of its characters. Though Audiard claims that Dheepan is not intended to be political, given the real-life nature of the circumstances, it cannot help but be just that. He said that he wanted "to give the faceless a name, a face, a shape," a story of their own and he has succeeded. In making a human document, he reminds us of the connection we have with people around the world whose voices we cannot hear, whose faces we cannot see, and whose hands we may never touch.