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, ethnicities or backgrounds.

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 young people, 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 the local community leader 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 had run away. Issa's friends then attack the three officers, throwing things 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 have 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 for 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 that contact to find Buzz, the person 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 (which happened to be spotted near them), the squadron takes the two to the circus. Although Issa is made to apologize, Zorro attempts to lock him as well as the cub inside a cage with a lion, scaring Issa into wetting himself and almost making Stéphane shoot the lion, until Issa is eventually let go. Deciding that Issa has learned his lesson, Chris drops him off and warns him not to tell anyone what happened, and, if asked about his injury, to say that he slipped and fell. 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 that a flash-ball cannot be fired by accident, and that Gwada had therefore intentionally shot Issa. Gwada blames his stress and the group 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, gets 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 young people, 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 young people, 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 happens to be 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's Les Misérables appears: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad humans. There are only bad cultivators."

• Damien Bonnard as Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz
• Alexis Manenti as Chris
• Djebril Zonga as Gwada
• Issa Perica as Issa
• Al-Hassan Ly as Buzz
• Steve Tientcheu as The Mayor
• Almamy Kanoute as Salah
• Nazar Ben Fatma as La Pince
• Raymond Lopez as Zorro
• Jeanne Balibar as The Commissioner

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.[4]

The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2019.[5] Shortly after, Amazon Studios acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[6] It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2019.[7] It was released in France on 20 November 2019 by Le Pacte.[8] It was released in the United States on 10 January 2020.[9]

• La Haine, a film with a similar theme and setting
• 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
• List of hood films

• Official website
• Les Misérables at IMDb 
• Les Misérables at AllMovie
• Les Misérables at AlloCiné (in French)