Hafsia Herzi wins César for Best Actress for her role in Borgo by Stéphane Demoustier

Published by Manon de Sortiraparis · Updated on March 1, 2025 at 12:14 a.m. · Published on April 5, 2024 at 09:05 a.m.
Based on a true story, Stéphane Demoustier's Borgo left the 2025 César Awards with the César for Best Actress for Hafsia Herzi. She plays a young matron involved in a double murder case in Corsica. Read our review again!

Five years after her remarkable La Fille au Bracelet, Stéphane Demoustier is back behind the camera with undisguised pleasure with Borgo, her new feature film.

Where and when can you see Borgo in France?

Borgo is released on VOD for purchase on August 16, 2024 and for rental on August 28, 2024.

Synopsis: Melissa, 32, an experienced prison guard, moves to Corsica with her two young children and her husband. It's a chance for a fresh start. She joins a team at a prison unlike any other. Here, it is said that it is the prisoners who watch over the guards. Melissa's integration is facilitated by Saveriu, an influential young inmate who places her under his protection. But once released, Saveriu gets back in touch with Melissa. He has a favor to ask of her... A pernicious mechanism is set in motion.

Inspired by a true story, that of the execution of Antoine Quilichini and Jean-Luc Codaccioni, two members of Corsican organized crime, at Bastia airport in 2017, and the involvement of a prison guard in the tragic unfolding of events, Borgo looks back at the criminal investigation, but also - and above all - at the singular path and context that led the young woman to put her fingers in this spiral that quickly overtook her.

Hafsia Herzi lends her features and strong character to Mélissa, an experienced 32-year-old housewife who has recently moved to Corsica with her two young children and husband. Faced with racism from some locals, they try to integrate and start a new life under the sun of the Isle of Beauty. We don't actually see much of Corsica, as the film takes place largely within the four walls of Borgo, the prison south of Bastia.

Mélissa is assigned to a very special unit, an open-regime ward for Corsican inmates, a sort of "Club Med" according to those concerned, where they can spend their days outside their cells, playing cards and smoking cigarettes. Faced with the misogyny of some prisoners, Mélissa's integration is facilitated by Saveriu(Louis Memmi), an influential young Corsican whom she met on the mainland at Fleury-Mérogis prison, before their transfer to the other side of the Mediterranean.

Cleverly shifting between different temporalities, Borgo takes up the codes of the thriller through the medium of intimacy, trying to pinpoint the motivations of a young woman who was in no way predisposed to become an actor in such a deadly ambush. Simply the collateral damage of a pernicious situation? Despite appearances, Stéphane Demoustier has created a fascinating new film, filled with a great humanity crystallized in a scene as cheerful as it is moving, the collective cover - in Corsican in the text - of Julien Clerc's song Mélissa.

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Practical information

Dates and Opening Time
Starts August 16, 2024

× Approximate opening times: to confirm opening times, please contact the establishment.
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