Grief and a robbery plan sit side by side in this 2022 French crime drama from director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, set entirely within the walls and courtyards of a housing estate called Temple Woods.
What is The Temple Woods Gang about?
A retired soldier returns to Temple Woods just as he is burying his mother, stepping back into a community he half remembers and half no longer belongs to. Next door, his neighbor Bébé is part of a local crew plotting something far riskier than the usual estate hustle: intercepting the convoy of a wealthy Arab prince passing through the region. The two storylines run in parallel rather than colliding head-on, letting the film sit with mourning, neighborhood loyalty, and the slow mechanics of a heist being assembled in plain sight. Rather than building toward a single explosive set piece, the film lingers in hallways, kitchens, and courtyards, treating the robbery as one more fact of life in a place already shaped by absence and routine.
About the cast
The ensemble is led by Régis Laroche and Philippe Petit, with Slimane Dazi, Lina El Arabi, Marie Loustalot, and Mohamed Aroussi rounding out the estate's residents and the crew around Bébé. Director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche also appears on screen, alongside musician Rodolphe Burger, continuing a working method he has used across his earlier films of casting close collaborators rather than a conventional star lineup.
Context & significance
Ameur-Zaïmeche has spent his career making films rooted in the housing estates on the edges of French cities, and Temple Woods Gang continues that focus, folding a heist plot into a story that is really about who gets left behind and who gets pulled toward risk. The film moves between drama, crime, and thriller registers without fully committing to any one of them, which is closer to how the director's earlier work has generally played out than to a conventional genre picture. Its France setting and small, tightly drawn cast give it the feel of a local chronicle rather than a big-canvas crime saga.
Watching The Temple Woods Gang on Ktime
The Temple Woods Gang is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login — no purchase needed to read this page or browse the catalogue. The film carries both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking viewers can choose either option, and the surrounding K-Time interface is built in Farsi for the diaspora audience it serves.