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Le Gang des Bois du Temple

The Temple Woods Gang
Still from the film "Le Gang des Bois du Temple" by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche. A man with a black hat and a black leather jacket is standing behind a wall and shooting a machine gun around the corner to the right. At the tip of the gun, there is a bright ball of light showing the explosion.
© Sarrazink Productions

Wed 22.02.
19:30

  • Director

    Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche

  • France / 2022
    112 min. / Original version with English subtitles

  • Original language

    French, English

  • Cinema

    Akademie der Künste

    zu den Ticketszu dem Kalender

Three men are taking a walk between the apartment blocks of a suburban housing estate, feeding pigeons. They belong to a gang of small-time crooks who pulled off a major coup during the armed robbery of a Saudi Arabian prince’s car. Their conversation revolves around acquiring a bionic prosthetic hand, a long-cherished dream that the stolen money can make a reality. They don’t yet know that they are being pursued. The tranquillity of the scene stands in stark contrast to the later shootout with cold-blooded killers and establishes a space beyond the genre conventions of the classic gangster film – as does the stunning performance of a chanson by Breton singer Annkrist at a funeral service at the beginning of the film. The prince’s ecstatic dance to raï music in a nightclub, during which his bodyguard fails to notice that he’s being watched, also forms part of this poetics of digression. At the end, when a neighbour who is friends with the gang looks out from his balcony at children and pigeons playing, while the verticals of the banlieue architecture glow in the autumn light, everything is peaceful again. (Birgit Kohler)

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media