Algerian film fans debate on French colonial past

By Kerstin Gehmlich

CANNES, France (Reuters) – Rachid Bouchareb’s film about
the role of North African soldiers in World War Two returns to
a delicate chapter of French history that has been ignored for
too long, the director said on Thursday.

“Indigenes,” French for “indigenous,” comes in the midst of
a heated debate in France over its colonial legacy, sparked by
a tough new immigration bill, suburban riots last year and a
controversial law on the country’s past role in Africa.

Said (Jamel Debbouze), Yassir (Samy Naceri) and their
friends are among thousands of men recruited from France’s
colonies in northern and western Africa to support French
troops in their fight against the Nazis.

They fight with passion and determination to defend the
“French motherland,” a territory they had never set foot in
before being called in to liberate German-occupied France.

But the Muslim soldiers are no equals in the French army
and struggle against daily humiliation — from being overlooked
for promotion to being denied their French comrades’ tomato
rations to struggling to receive a decent pension when the war
is over.

“We thought the war would give us the same rights as our
French brothers,” one soldier says. “It’s about time you gave
us some of that liberty, equality and above all, that
fraternity.”

Director Bouchareb, a French national with Algerian
origins, said he wanted to open a debate on a long-ignored
issue.

“This is a film about my past,” he told reporters in
Cannes, where Indigenes (screening as “Days of Glory” in
English) is competing for the main Palme d’Or prize.

“We wanted to open a chapter in French history and show how
we are looking upon it,” Bouchareb said. “We have enriched
French history.”

IMMIGRATION DEBATE

Actor Naceri said as a pupil, none of his teachers told him
about North African soldiers’ role in liberating France.

“It is important for schools to talk about this and say
that we were there too,” said Naceri, the son of a French
mother and Algerian father.

The teaching of French colonial history has become an issue
of controversy in France after a new law urged teachers to
stress the “positive role of the French presence overseas.”

Critics of the law asked whether France, whose empire ended
in bloody wars in Indochina and Algeria, had learned anything
from its colonial experience. President Jacques Chirac ordered
the repeal of the contested article after weeks of debate.

Bouchareb said his film could add context to an immigration
debate in France centered around a tough new bill by Interior
Minister Nicolas Sarkozy which will make family reunification
more difficult and expulsions from France easier.

France vowed to tighten immigration rules after rioting
youths — many of them of immigrant origin — set thousands of
cars ablaze in Paris’s suburbs last November.

“I think it would be interesting for (Sarkozy) to watch the
film and realize these men (fought) to save the motherland, to
liberate it, to save it from Nazi occupation,” Bouchareb said.

“Immigration in France is being debated around what
happened in the suburbs during a five-week period. But I think
you have to review the history of immigration in … its
globality and not base it on several days, when elections are
approaching.”

Algeria was invaded by France in 1830 and became a colony
until independence in 1962. France ruled over more than
one-third of Africa at the height of its empire.