trendaway.com

I had been looking forward to Indigènes (Rachid Bouchareb) for a long time, having read the buzz about it after its success at Cannes (the Best Actor award was given to the male ensemble). I am a big fan of films that deal with both the humanity and action of war. This film promised to be different than other WWII films as it focuses on North Africans from French territories who are fighting for France, a country that none of them had ever set foot on.

The film follows four soldiers, each with their own reasons for joining the war. Be it security, money, adventure or a sense of patriotism, these men fought against the same enemy. One of these enemies, however, was not Nazi Germany, rather racial discrimination from French soldiers and leaders. They did not receive the same benefits as the native French soldiers, including types of food, time off and, after the war was over, pension. Soldiers from former French colonies have, for over forty years, been paid ten to twenty times less than French countertparts. Very recently, and in large part thanks to this film, this has changed.

This was an excellent film. It looked great and the acting was supurb. Photography was cool - there were some really neat transitional aerial shots in black and white looking like a photo from the period, which would then sweep slowly from left to right and turn into colour. This film also had some of the best combat scenes that I’ve seen: very intense and perfect for plainly demonstrating one of the many reasons why France’s mistreatment of its troops is so terrible.

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Indigènes (2006) * Director: Rachid Bouchareb * Writers: Rachid Bouchareb, Olivier Lorelle