One of the surprise omissions from the Academy’s Foreign Language shortlist this year was the absence of Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux), a film I saw on my final day at the Cannes Film Festival as it was one of the films I’d missed and many were talking about as a possible contender for the Palm d’Or. It didn’t end up winning as it lost to fellow shortlist exclusion Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
I never did get around to reviewing it, but I will get a second shot come February 25, the day Sony PIctures Classics will release the film in New York and Los Angeles prior to what I imagine will be a slow roll out to the major cities around the country shortly thereafter.
The film is quite good as it tells the story of eight French Christian monks living in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. Violence begins to brew all around them, but despite the danger they decide to stay no matter the cost. The film is loosely based on the story of the This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, whom you can read more about at Wikipedia, but I am warning you it will spoil the movie a little bit.
The film stars Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach and Jacques Herlin. You can check out the trailer directly below.
