Days of Glory (2006)
(Indigènes)
Country: FR/BEL/MOR/ALG
Technical: col/2.35:1 124m
Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila
Synopsis:
1943: for their differing reasons - poverty, ambition, misplaced patriotism - young men from the newly liberated Maghreb join up in the French army and fight their way through Italy and France alongside, though usually ahead of, their French comrades in arms.
Review:
A bitterly moving reflection on the unacknowledged contribution of their compatriots to the war by Algerian and Moroccan film makers, this is said to have had an almost effect on President Chirac and France's unreversed decision to freeze veterans' pensions in the 1970s. Rather than seek to outdo the recent warfilms of Spielberg, Eastwood et al., it concentrates on a series of examples in which the platoon of recruits, emblematic of hundreds of others, is passed over or put into the line of fire, their mail censored, their unflinching devotion to cause unrewarded. Often poetic in its visual sweep and eye for detail, it culminates in the one significant action sequence, a firefight in an Alsatian village with a squad of German soldiers armed with a bazooka. A significant film for the African continental cause, and a powerful one in its own right.
(Indigènes)
Country: FR/BEL/MOR/ALG
Technical: col/2.35:1 124m
Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila
Synopsis:
1943: for their differing reasons - poverty, ambition, misplaced patriotism - young men from the newly liberated Maghreb join up in the French army and fight their way through Italy and France alongside, though usually ahead of, their French comrades in arms.
Review:
A bitterly moving reflection on the unacknowledged contribution of their compatriots to the war by Algerian and Moroccan film makers, this is said to have had an almost effect on President Chirac and France's unreversed decision to freeze veterans' pensions in the 1970s. Rather than seek to outdo the recent warfilms of Spielberg, Eastwood et al., it concentrates on a series of examples in which the platoon of recruits, emblematic of hundreds of others, is passed over or put into the line of fire, their mail censored, their unflinching devotion to cause unrewarded. Often poetic in its visual sweep and eye for detail, it culminates in the one significant action sequence, a firefight in an Alsatian village with a squad of German soldiers armed with a bazooka. A significant film for the African continental cause, and a powerful one in its own right.
(Indigènes)
Country: FR/BEL/MOR/ALG
Technical: col/2.35:1 124m
Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila
Synopsis:
1943: for their differing reasons - poverty, ambition, misplaced patriotism - young men from the newly liberated Maghreb join up in the French army and fight their way through Italy and France alongside, though usually ahead of, their French comrades in arms.
Review:
A bitterly moving reflection on the unacknowledged contribution of their compatriots to the war by Algerian and Moroccan film makers, this is said to have had an almost effect on President Chirac and France's unreversed decision to freeze veterans' pensions in the 1970s. Rather than seek to outdo the recent warfilms of Spielberg, Eastwood et al., it concentrates on a series of examples in which the platoon of recruits, emblematic of hundreds of others, is passed over or put into the line of fire, their mail censored, their unflinching devotion to cause unrewarded. Often poetic in its visual sweep and eye for detail, it culminates in the one significant action sequence, a firefight in an Alsatian village with a squad of German soldiers armed with a bazooka. A significant film for the African continental cause, and a powerful one in its own right.