Les Misérables (2019 film)

The film begins with images of the crowd in Paris celebrating the victory of the French team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which had been perceived and celebrated in France as a moment of brotherhood between people of different social classes or ethnicities.

Soon after, Stéphane Ruiz, a Police officer who recently moved to Paris and joined the anti-crime brigade, is assigned to work with squad leader Chris and brigadier Gwada on duty in the nearby city of Montfermeil. Chris often aggressively abuses his power on teenagers, with Gwada complacent with that abuse; while he feels unease, Stéphane doesn't interfere. Meanwhile, Issa, a known juvenile delinquent, steals Johnny, a lion cub, from a circus, causing its owner Zorro to go to a man known as "the Mayor" and threaten to return with firearms if Johnny is not returned. Chris and his squadron are tasked with finding and retrieving the cub.

One of Issa's friends takes a picture of Issa with the cub and posts it on Instagram, leading Chris to find out that Issa is the culprit. They chase, capture and handcuff him, but he claims that the cub run away. Issa's friends then attack the trio, throwing objects at them to stop them from taking Issa in. When Issa tries to run away, Gwada, having accidentally teargassed himself during the chase, shoots him in the face with a flash-ball. Issa's friends scatter, but the squadron realize that they had been filmed by a drone, which escapes. While Stéphane wants to take a badly wounded Issa to a hospital, Chris and Gwada refuse, and instead the trio take him with them in their search of the drone's owner.

The trio arrive at a local neighborhood contact of Chris, leaving Issa in their care and using information given to them by said contact to find Buzz, the teenager the drone belongs to, forcing him to flee before he can upload the video. Buzz, who still carries the drone's memory card, escapes the squadron and takes shelter with Salah, a restaurant owner and key member of the local Islamic community. Both the squadron and the mayor, having found out, arrive at Salah's restaurant. After a tense confrontation during which Chris attempts to illegally arrest Buzz, Ruiz convinces Salah to give him the memory card, claiming that Issa's shooting was just an accident.

After recovering Issa and the cub (who happened to be spotted near them), the squadron takes the two to Zorro. Although they make Issa apologize, Zorro attempts to lock the two inside a cage with a fully grown lion, scaring Issa into wetting himself and almost making Stéphane shoot the lion, although he eventually lets him go. Deciding that Issa has learned his lesson, Chris drops him off and warns him not to tell anyone what happened, and to say that he slipped and fell if asked about his injury. In the evening, the characters involved in that day's event seemingly return to their normal lives, some with visible signs of distress and doubt; Issa, who had been told earlier that his father did not want him back home because of his behavior, sits alone on a ruined couch, traumatized. Later that night, Ruiz meets Gwada in a bar and tells him that he knows a flash-ball cannot be fired by accident, and that Gwada had therefore intentionally shot Issa. Gwada blames his stress and the children for overwhelming him, and Stéphane, while unconvinced, leaves Gwada with the card, telling him to "do what you gotta do."

The next day, the squadron, while on patrol, get attacked by a small group led by Issa. They chase them, falling into Issa's trap and ending up assaulted by a much larger group of teenagers, leaving them trapped from all sides in a stairwell and fighting for their lives. Chris is wounded when a bottle breaks on his face, and the backup car Stéphane radios for gets immediately destroyed by the teenagers, forcing the backup policemen to flee. They also attack the mayor's office and end up clubbing him and throwing him down a set of stairs. Stéphane pounds on the nearest door begging for help, which, incidentally, is the door to Buzz's apartment; however, Buzz further locks the door. Issa lights a molotov cocktail and prepares to finish the squadron off with it, leading Stéphane to point his gun at him and warn him not to; the screen fades to black as both Issa and Stéphane try to decide what to do next, and a quote from Victor Hugo' Les Misérables appear: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."

In October 2018, it was announced Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djebril Zonga had joined the cast of the film, with Ladj Ly directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside Giordano Gederlini and Alexis Manenti.[3]

The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2019.[4] Shortly after, Amazon Studios acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[5] It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2019.[6] It was released in France on 20 November 2019 by Le Pacte.[7] It was released in the United States on 10 January 2020.[8]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 82% based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 7.41/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Les Misérables transcends its unwieldy story with compelling ideas and an infectious energy that boils over during a thrilling final act."[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[10]

It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival,[11] where it won the Jury Prize.[12][13] It was selected as the French entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards,[14] making the December shortlist, then later being nominated.[15] The film received 3 nominations to the 32nd European Film Awards, for Best Film, Best Screenwriter and European Discovery, winning the latter.[16] The film got 11 nominations for the César Awards, and won 4: Best Film, Best Editing, Most Promising Actor (for Alexis Manenti), and the Audience Award.

• List of submissions to the 92nd Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film

• Official website
• Les Misérables on IMDb