An expected crisis between Algeria and France because of a movie about Djamila Boupacha

The French actresses Marina Hands, Emmanuelle Béart and the Tunisian Hafsia Herzi perform in a French movie “For Djamila” about the Algerian prominent war veteran Djamila Boupacha.

 The movie directed by the French Caroline Huppert and produced by Laurence Bachman “Barjac Production” for the French Chanel France 3.

The work based on the book of the lawyer Giséle Halimi (acted by Marina Hands) and was filmed in Morocco on last April.

Echorouk learned from sources close to family of the war veteran Djamila Boupacha that this work outraged her because it is based on the book of Giséle Halimi full of mistakes and historical inaccuracies about her personality which did not have time for pleading to correct them, because she was at the time of writing the book in French detentions, deprived from all civil rights.

According to Echorouk sources, this war veteran contacted the Ministry of Culture in order to halt the filming of this movie, however, the ministry confirmed on the lips of the head of the minister’s office Ms. Zahira Yahi that the movie is French and produced by French money and filmed outside of Algeria therefore the ministry has nothing to do, but to hire a lawyer to consider the case.

Based on this, the war veteran hired a lawyer Ali Haroune a member of the federation of FLN in France, who resumed his contacts with the company of production which confirmed that it bought the rights of turning the book of Giséle Halimi to a movie from the French house, and the movie is filmed outside Algeria therefore she has no right to intervene.

The lawyer Ali Haroune  resorted to hiring another French lawyer to plead the case and seek to stop the filming, while Djamila Boupacha, according to her relatives, asked the meeting with the president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and has received a positive response from the presidency pending the reception of the president personally to consider the case which may take another aspects, especially as Boubacha is determined to stop the movie which distorts her revolutionary path and struggle to get freedom because the book of Halimi presents her as a terrorist which benefited from the sympathy of the French, the same book in which Giséle Halimi exploited the name of Boubacha and Simone de Beauvoir  to make fame on the back of the Algerian case, although she always claimed that she is the lawyer of FLN, while the well aware of history know that she has never been among the committee of lawyers who defended the political prisoners and war veterans on behalf of FLN collectively.

 On the other hand, Echorouk knew from its informed sources, that 20 French producers presented their own movies about the Algerian war and events of revolution and prominent personalities in history, projects that the French companies start to prepare since more than a year and were discussed with Algerian parts during the symposium of the Mediterranean on cinema and television, a move seen by observers as a disaster by all measures, because France which expended 130 years to suppress the Algerian identity is back today to write about the Algerian history across the image, and everyone knows the importance and seriousness of cinema in promoting historical fallacies, and if Algeria do not move to stop this farce it would be a real disaster.

In the same context, the Ministry of Culture is expected to publish on its website on August 20, the date of Soummam Meeting, a list of works approved for next year’s production of the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Algeria’s Independence Day in 2012.