Roman realises his own survival, and the prison’s stability, depend on his ability to spin a yarn, Scheherazade-like, through the night till dawn.

“When the red moon comes out tomorrow night you must tell us stories,” Blackbeard commands him. Into this volatile situation arrives a timid young man (Bakary Koné) who, for reasons he cannot fathom, is nominated “Roman”, or storyteller. By the time Balon Greyjoy was really asserting himself in the current civil war, Renly may already have been dead and at any rate, Renlys role in the war was mostly just cutting off supplies to Kings Landing. There were never, or hardly ever, five kings at one time warring with each other. But he is dying and others are vying to take his place, which means a violent power struggle is imminent. First lets get things straight: t he WAr of the Five Kings was always a bit of an arbitrary name.

According to Night of the Kings, the true ruler of the Maca is an inmate named Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu, last seen in Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables). Why do the Starks hate the Lannisters Who are the 5 Kings How many died in the War of the Five Kings Who killed Robert Baratheon Did King Robert know about.

Rather than being locked in cells, the inmates seem to have free run of the place, while armed guards observe nervously from behind barricades. The prison in question feels more like a slum than a penitentiary.

As well as a testament to the power of storytelling to transcend the grimmest of circumstances, it could also be read as a commentary on Ivory Coast’s own war-torn, postcolonial reality. T he Maca prison, outside Abidjan, is a world with its own codes and rules, we are told, and this imaginative, energetic Ivorian drama follows suit, blending modern-day thriller dynamics and fluid handheld visuals with older storytelling traditions to produce something unique and locally specific.

War of the 5 kings