A Prayer Before Dawn - The last prayer

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Movie
German title A Prayer Before Dawn - The last prayer
Original title A Prayer Before Dawn
Country of production France , United Kingdom , China , USA
original language English , Thai
Publishing year 2017
length 122 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
script Jonathan Hirschbein ,
Nick Saltrese
production Roy Boulter ,
Rita Dagher ,
Sol Papadopoulos ,
Nicholas Simon
music Nicolas Becker
camera David Ungaro
cut Marc Boucrot
occupation

A Prayer Before Dawn (original title A Prayer Before Dawn ) is an action , boxer and prison film directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire , which celebrated its world premiere on May 19, 2017 as part of the Cannes International Film Festival . The biography tells of the real experiences of the Briton Billy Moore in Thai prisons and how he was able to prove himself in the hierarchy there through his boxing talent.

action

After the young Brit Billy Moore was caught drug dealing / smuggling in Thailand, he was put in a jail in Bangkok, which is considered to be the toughest in the country. He doesn't speak Thai, has no money, and to top it all off, withdrawal symptoms are slowly but surely noticeable. Among the heavily tattooed local prisoners, the pale boy is exotic and, like all new prisoners, only fresh meat. Because Billy is good at boxing, he can be trained by other inmates in the martial arts Muay Thai . A transsexual fellow inmate becomes his confidante.

In the extremely brutal prison hierarchy, his only chance of survival and recognition is to prove himself in fights that are organized in prison. When he is nominated for a Muay Thai competition, he has to fight for his life because the prisoners have bet on his victory. If he comes back as a loser, he's as good as dead.

Biographical

The Briton Billy Moore spent several years in prisons in Thailand

The film is based on the book A Prayer Before Dawn. My Nightmare in Thailand's Prisons by the author Billy Moore . In it, the Brit tells his own story of how he was imprisoned in one of the most famous Thai prisons and of the brutal everyday life there. To earn his freedom, Moore took part in Muay Thai competitions . The Liverpool-born Moore's childhood was marked by poverty, abuse and his alcoholic father, which is why he slipped more and more into crime and became a drug addict. Burglaries and drug offenses followed, for which he was imprisoned in various prisons for a total of 15 years. After his release, he traveled to Thailand to make a fresh start, to change his life, to leave the drugs and criminal activities behind. However, he did not succeed. In Chiang Mai prison , Moore was not exactly welcome as a foreigner among Thai prisoners. He was transferred to the Klong Prem prison in Bangkok, which is notorious for its brutality and corruption.

production

Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
One of the locations: Cebu City

Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire . Moore's novel was adapted for the film by Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese .

Joe Cole took on the role of Billy Moore, who in turn plays his own father in the film. Most of the other roles were filled with boxers and real prison inmates. The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book and the dialogue direction by Angelika Scharf on behalf of Synch! Synch! Kino- & TV-Synchronization GmbH, Hamburg. In the German version, Ivo Möller lends his voice to the protagonist Billy Moore.

The filming took place in Cebu City in the Philippines and in the central prison of the Nakhon Pathom Province in Thailand .

The film was shown for the first time on May 19, 2017 as part of the Cannes International Film Festival in the Séances de minuit section. It was shown for the first time in Switzerland at the Zurich Film Festival from September 29, 2017, and in the United Kingdom for the first time at the London Film Festival from October 10, 2017 . Before the film was released in selected US cinemas on August 10, 2018, it was presented at the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 12, 2018. The cinema release in France was on June 20, 2018. In Germany, it came to selected cinemas on November 8, 2018 and was released on March 8, 2019 on Blu-ray and DVD. On May 9, 2020, he is to be included in the Amazon Prime Video program.

reception

Age rating and film genre

In the US, the MPAA gave the film an R rating for portrayals of drastic violence, including a brutal rape sequence, drug use, some sexual content, and portrayal of nudity, which is 17 years of age or older. In Germany the film is FSK 16 . The statement of reasons for the release states: “The film tells the story from the perspective of the protagonist and thus creates a haunting image of the hardship and dangers in everyday prison life in Bangkok. The intensity of the threat scenario, the acts of arbitrary violence and the extensive fighting scenes can overwhelm children and adolescents under the age of 16. "However, since violence is never presented as an effective means of solving problems and the film ultimately emphasizes positive values, 16-year-olds are able to to process these aspects in the context of the story, so on. The foreign setting, far from their own everyday life, and the sporty aspects of the plot would also offer sufficient relief to process the film without fear or socio-ethical disorientation.

The film critic Antje Wessels explains that the script is extremely brutal with the prisoners. Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese did not accept any compromises and let the inmates rape, brutally beat, stab and curse their fellow inmates, which is why the FSK approval from 16 in this case is absolutely justified, even if the film always includes the most brutal moments in a narrative Context moves. The images of serious sexual abuse, in which Billy, just like the viewer, is forced to watch, would burn in your memory for a long time. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire has a ruthless method of telling stories from Billy's point of view and for example dispenses with subtitles: “If the prisoners around Billy speak Thai or any other language that the young man does not speak, then the viewer is just as perplexed next to it, like the main character. ”For A Prayer Before Dawn, Sauvaire falls back on two genres that at first glance have only secondary connection with each other, but which have one crucial thing in common in their narrative style, since boxing as well as The prison film usually lived on a very subjective narrative, so Wessels.

Reviews

So far, the film has received the approval of 92 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and achieved an average rating of 7.4 out of a possible 10 points.

In her review, the film critic Antje Wessels notes the extremely dosed use of music by the composer Nicolas Becker and the shaky, intimate camera work by cameraman David Ungaro , who literally sticks to the protagonist, rarely focuses on a specific point in the room, but leaves the entire scene in the room which gives the impression of being documentary and unadulterated. Even if Billy was introduced as a passionate boxer at the beginning, sport moved into the background for a long time after his imprisonment, and only gradually did A Prayer Before Dawn develop into an athletic drama that was largely subject to the unwritten laws of boxing films. The newcomer Joe Cole mimes the fighter who is outwardly becoming more and more resolute, but who internally continues to shatter from day to day due to the circumstances in prison, with self-sacrificing turmoil, as Wessels sums up: “ Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire succeeds with his bitter prison drama A Prayer Before Dawn provides an extremely authentic insight into the hard life behind Thai bars and uses various smart tricks to make the story of main character Billy look as believable as possible. "

Awards (selection)

British Independent Film Awards 2018

  • Award as Best Actor ( Joe Cole )
  • Nomination for Best Cinematography (David Ungaro)
  • Nomination for Best Editing (Marc Boucrot)
  • Nomination for Best Make Up & Hair Design (Stacey Louise Holman)
  • Nomination for the best sound (Séverin Favriau)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for A Prayer Before Dawn - The Last Prayer . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 177570 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b A Prayer Before Dawn. In: historyvshollywood.com. Retrieved April 14, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b A Prayer Before Dawn - The Last Prayer - British-American-French-Chinese drama, biography from 2017. In: wordpress.com, December 7, 2018.
  4. ↑ a b c Antje Wessels: A Prayer Before Dawn. In: wessels-filmkritik.com, November 5, 2018.
  5. ↑ A Prayer Before Dawn - The Last Prayer. In: synchronkartei.de, German synchronous card index . Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  6. ^ Fionnuala Halligan: 'A Prayer Before Dawn': Cannes Review. In: screendaily.com, May 20, 2017.
  7. ↑ http://www.filmjournal.com/reviews/film-review-prayer-dawn
  8. ↑ These are the series and film highlights in May 2020. In: welt.de. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  9. ↑ a b A Prayer Before Dawn. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 14, 2019. Note: The Tomatometer is the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critics who gave the film a positive rating.
  10. ↑ Reason for release for A Prayer Before Dawn - The Last Prayer . In: Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry. Retrieved April 13, 2019.