Algerian anti-colonial film sparks Cannes protests
الشروق أونلاين
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Director Rachid Bouchareb attends a photocall for the film Hors La Loi at Cannes/ Reuters
Some 1,200 people assembled in Cannes to pay homage to French soldiers who fought in Algeria in the 1940s on Friday, the day when French-Algerian film-maker Rachid Bouchareb’s film about Algerian liberation is being screened. The film has sparked fury in France for its negative portrayal of France’s colonial history.
- France’s far-right National Front party planned the march to protest against Bouchareb’s Hors-la-loi (Outside of the law). The film is about Algerian brothers driven from their home by French colonialists as children who grow up to launch a resistance movement in France. It opens with the massacre of Algerian citizens by the French army in Setif in 1945.
- The mayor of Cannes, Bernard Brochand, is holding a ceremony for French victims of the events in Setif. Brochand is a member of the ruling UMP party and several other UMP members are involved in the initiative.
- About 70 veterans of the war came, carrying flags. After trooping the colour, they sang the Marseilleise. The police have increased their presence around the film’s screening.
- The UMP French secretary of state, defence and war veterans, Hubert Falco, said he would have nothing to do with the film.
- “The ceremony is strictly local, organised by the Cannes municipality, and he has nothing to do with it,” his office said.
- Lionnel Luca, the member of parliament for Alpes-Maritimes, said Bouchareb had falsified history and aggravated old wounds in an irresponsible manner.
- “Rachid Bouchareb’s film, which I have just watched, is partisan, militant and pro FLN (National Liberation Front),” he said. “It is even worse than I’d heard. I’m sorry that French channels have financed a film where the French army is compared to the SS and the French police to the Gestapo.”
- Between 15,000 Algerians, according to French historians, and up to 45,000, according to Algerian, were killed by the French army in repression of pro-independence demonstrations.
- Bouchared said he had not wanted to cause a fight.
- “Cinema is not a battlefield,” he said. “I made the film to open the debate in a calm way.”
