Night of the Kings
Neon | Release Date (Streaming): February 26, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshFeb 24, 2021
What happens in Night of the Kings is a piece of traditional oration and impermanent art, significantly marked by both its temporal and improvisational qualities. It’s both a power struggle and a ritual practiced by the collective within a microcosm of society housed under the oppression of the state, and a powerful demonstration of the transporting, and liberating, power of narrative. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsDec 31, 2020
With Night of the Kings Lacôte collapses the bounds between eras, and dissolves myth and reality, performance and remembrance, into one whole. It’s an assured, energetic piece of epic filmmaking, one that celebrates how storytelling, oration, and folklore teach us about our past so we might change our present. Read full review
93
PolygonKaren HanSep 24, 2020
Night of the Kings occasionally strays too far into fantasy (and CGI), even though the more grounded scenes are what truly make the film sing. Still, it’s a stunning work. Lacôte’s tribute to the power of stories is a powerful story in and of itself, celebrating oral traditions and the rituals we create for ourselves in order to make life just a little more bearable. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 24, 2020
With this project, in which magical realism lends everything a mystical dimension, Lacôte confidently delivers on the promise of his 2014 Cannes-selected “Run.” Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijSep 16, 2020
This captivating hybrid of a movie mixes fairy-tale and storytelling elements with a vividly drawn backdrop of heightened realism — no one would mistake this prison for a luxury resort — and relies on images and sounds as much as the human voice to tell its multiple stories. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 25, 2021
A tribute to the power of imagination and storytelling, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpDec 30, 2020
Night of Kings aesthetic dissonance is discombobulating, but the discombobulation is surprisingly pleasing in its headiness, as Lacôte plays with naturalist filmmaking and spectacle right out of The Lord of the Rings, intertwining the two so much that they are, at the end, inseparable from one another. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubBeatrice LoayzaFeb 24, 2021
Lacôte’s got a lot on his mind, and despite a few missteps, his ambition pays off. Read full review
83
ConsequenceValerie ComplexFeb 9, 2021
Storytelling is an essential part of the human experience: How would we know the past and create futures without it? That conceit is the heart and power of Night of the Kings. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeJul 26, 2021
This portrayal of imprisonment may be authentically down to earth (Blackbeard’s rival Lass wants inmates to be managed “more rationally”, not as enslaved people but “customers”), but Night of the Kings proves most captivating in evoking the transformative power of the imagination. Read full review
80
The GuardianSteve RoseJul 20, 2021
The freshness of the approach, combined with the substance of the stories, works the same strange magic on the viewer as on the inmates. It is easy to be swept along. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiMar 12, 2021
Despite a weaker final act, Night of the Kings is spectacular, enthralling, and gripping. It's nearly poetic in its execution and that alone makes it well worth the watch. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMar 1, 2021
To say that not everything coheres in this swift, propulsive 93-minute film is to suggest that the filmmaker has done justice to the unruliness of his subject: In capturing and preserving a long-standing oral tradition, he has arrived at both a persuasive vision of the past and a hopeful glimpse of the future. Like all good storytellers, he leaves you wanting more. Read full review
80
Film ThreatBradley GibsonFeb 9, 2021
Lacôte’s second directorial feature, Night of the Kings, is an epically ambitious undertaking, roaring along on several parallel tracks, with a dizzying number of sub-stories to track. The world inside MACA prison is a complex, layered cultural and political system. Read full review
80
CineVueMatthew AndersonFeb 4, 2021
Though physically confined to a single, overcrowded communal space inside La Maca, Night of the Kings travels well beyond its bars and high walls, soaring far and wide with spirit, invention and imagination. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLee MarshallSep 16, 2020
This is an atmospherically shot film about African oral culture, about riots, street musicians and storytellers. But it also uses the space and denizens of the prison as a metaphor for the divisions and tensions within Ivorian society. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenFeb 24, 2021
Part poetry slam, part dance performance, part survivalist nightmare, Night of Kings imagines narrative as a saving grace, even in the darkest place. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 18, 2020
City of God crossed with A Prophet by way of One Thousand and One Nights, Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings is an ambitious thriller that constantly surprises. Read full review
75
IndieWireRyan LattanzioSep 16, 2020
While the film, both written and directed by Lacôte, is grounded in oral traditions that may seem exotic to certain viewers, the movie is really about the universal power of storytelling regardless of tongue — and how it can be used as a way to survive. Read full review
75
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 16, 2020
The film most likely work better for those with knowledge of the Ivory Coast and its tumultuous twenty-first century history, but that doesn’t mean those like me who are ignorant to that strife outside of what Lacôte and Roman provide can’t still enjoy the magic on display. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 13, 2020
The film is a celebration of oral traditions as a means of giving purpose to even the most hopeless of lives. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsMar 10, 2021
This is a film steeped in myth and ritual, besotted with secrets, history, and imagination — with a clear eye on the Ivory Coast’s politics. Read full review
70
The New York TimesNicolas RapoldDec 30, 2020
Lacôte crosses the open-ended energy of griot traditions with the surging tensions of the prison’s close quarters. Read full review
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