By Mónica Delgado

Les misérables by French filmmaker Ladj Ly had all the elements to promise a real feat: a filmmaker who comes from the marginal Arab and African suburbs of France, actors of the same community ready to play as gang members, a pop review of the heart of Victor Hugo’s work about the excesses of legality and the revenge of poverty, and a police story / thriller that takes the streets by storm. However, these elements are wasted for an unforgivable concession to a festival formula that insists on portraying social issues from the codes of miserabilism and the urgency to calm the guilt through a “social” or realist cinema.