Samba

Samba lives in France, having arrived from Senegal a decade earlier, and gets by through a series of short-term jobs while lacking the residency papers that would let him settle into steady work. Alice, a senior executive recovering from burnout, volunteers at an association that handles legal matters for immigrants, and the two meet when his case comes to her attention. Each is stuck in a personal dead end, and their encounter gradually pulls both toward something different. The film follows their attempts to move forward rather than any single resolution.

Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache wrote and directed the film, their third feature together after Those Happy Days and The Intouchables, and it sits between the latter and C'est la vie! in their shared filmography. Omar Sy plays Samba, with Charlotte Gainsbourg as Alice, and Tahar Rahim, Izïa Higelin, Issaka Sawadogo and Hélène Vincent among the large credited cast. Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Laurent Zeitoun and Yann Zenou produced.

Released in October 2014 and running just under two hours, the French production had a budget of around 20 million dollars. On IMDb it holds a 6.7 rating from roughly 18,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.4 from about a thousand votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 across 67 reviews places it broadly in line with those audience scores, drawing a moderately positive response rather than the wide enthusiasm that greeted the directors' previous film.