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Dheepan (Criterion Collection) DVD

With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as one of the titans of contemporary world cinema. In an arresting performance, the nonprofessional actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan (himself a former child soldier) stars as a Tamil fighter who, along with a woman and child posing as his wife and daughter, flees war-torn Sri Lanka only to land in a Paris suburb riddled with drugs. As the makeshift family embarks on a new life, Dheepan settles into an intimate social-realist mode, before tightening, gradually and organically, into a dynamic turf-war thriller, as well as an unsettling study of the psychological aftereffects of combat. Searing and sensitive, Audiard’s film is a unique depiction of the refugee experience as a continuous crisis of identity.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• High-definition digital Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2015 featuring director Jacques Audiard and coscreenwriter Noé Debré
• New interview with Audiard
• New interview with actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan
• Deleted scenes with audio commentary by Audiard and Debré
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R Restricted
• Run Time: 114 minutes

PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Atkinson