NO FEAR, NO DIE

Isaach de Bankolé and Alex Descas star in the under-seen second feature by celebrated director Claire Denis, NO FEAR, NO DIE, an unflinching portrait of two Black immigrant men from Benin and French Antilles, scraping out a living through illegal cockfights in a restaurant basement on the outskirts of Paris. As their restaurateur partner, portrayed by French New Wave legend Jean-Claude Brialy, demands more violence and blood, bonds fray and tensions escalate out of control—all set to a slow-burning score by South African jazz great Abdullah Ibrahim. Inspired by the writings of postcolonial philosopher Frantz Fanon, the ruggedly unsentimental and psychologically evocative NO FEAR, NO DIE is a forceful examination of the lives of immigrants in France and of the psychic toll of the violence imposed by colonizers upon the colonized.