In today's world, we increasingly hear stories of uprooted people fleeing war and destruction, tales of loss, abandonment, estrangement, and mass migration. These refugees are willing to risk all in their quest to find a new home in a safe place. Their stories compel us to reflect anew on the challenges facing those forced to be on the run.

Dheepan is a poignant and revealing French film about three down-and-almost out Sri Lankan refugees. This gripping film won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Sivadhasan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a soldier who has been involved in the long and bloody civil war in Sri Lanka. He decides to seek a new life in France; his wife and child are dead. In a refugee camp, Sivadhasan receives the passport of a dead man named Dheepan and is paired with Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), who is designated as his wife, and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), a nine-year-old orphan identified as the daughter in this instant family.

Leaving behind the Tamil freedom fighters who were his comrades, Dheepan soon finds himself on the streets of Paris selling things to make small change. He and Yalini con their way through a social services interview and find themselves assigned to live in a large and dirty housing project where drug dealers hang out and conduct business. It is not what any of them dreamed about and it is difficult to accept this dangerous and disgusting place as home.

Youssouf (Marc Zinga) explains Dheepan's new job as the resident caretaker. Illayaal has a hard time in the special needs class at a local school where she is seen as an immigrant outsider. Yalini does not adapt well to her new roles as wife and mother. She starts thinking about leaving her phony family and joining her cousin in London. For a while, she pulls out of her funk after landing a profitable job cooking and cleaning for a disabled old man. His nephew Brahim (Vincent Rottiers) is the leader of a violent gang of thugs.

The yearning for a true home animates these three Sri Lankans as they find themselves caught up in the same kind of senseless and dehumanizing violence that they knew during the civil war. Dheepan, wary of the fighting among the drug dealers, valiantly tries to create a no-conflict zone in the housing projects central courtyard.

Dheepan is a tense and involving film in which director Jacques Audiard makes it clear that there are no safe places in our world. War, murder, random acts of revenge, and terrorism are the cronies who break our hearts. Home is a work of art and it takes a long time to create one. The three main characters must find their way through a storm cloud of gunfire and death before they can begin again to claim what they have always dreamed of but never had — a place where they can say, "You are mine and I am yours."

Screened through the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Festival, Lincoln Center, New York, March 2016.