Bad Seeds

Bad Seeds (Mauvaises herbes, 2018) is Kheiron's French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. Wael, a former street kid, gets by running small cons alongside his adoptive mother Monique. Then the pair fleeces exactly the wrong man, and the payback takes a shape neither saw coming.

Their mark, Victor, is an old friend of Monique who runs a support program for troubled teenagers. Instead of calling the police, he puts Wael to work off the debt as a stand-in tutor for six unruly kids every other school has given up on. Kheiron writes, directs and stars, with Catherine Deneuve and André Dussollier lending real heft to what could have been a slight street story.

Wael reaches the teens not through lectures but through the same hustler's tricks he grew up on, and slowly figures out he's repairing his own past along with theirs. It's warm, funny and quietly aching, a second-chance story with no sugar and no sermons. Good pick for anyone who likes French comedies with a social conscience. Stream Bad Seeds (2018) online on iFILM.