"Indigènes" - Film honours France's African saviours

[liberte]

Film honours France's African saviours

No liberty, fraternity or equality... Les Indigènes

At his home in the small Alsace village of Wittenheim, Yoube Lalleg expressed no regrets about leaving his village in Algeria aged 21 to liberate France from the "tyranny" of Nazi occupation.
He just wished more people knew his story. So, dressed in a suit and bow tie, the 87-year-old war veteran appeared on the red carpet at this year's Cannes film festival in support of a controversial new action film about the forgotten north African heroes of the second world war.

The film, Indigènes, opens in Paris tomorrow amid a furious row over France's racist treatment of colonial troops and a political battle over pensions worth millions of euros that surviving veterans are still owed.
What began as a small independent movie that battled for years to raise its budget - the sympathetic king of Morocco even stepped in to provide his army logistics corps free of charge - has taken on epic proportions on France's political scene. Indigènes won Cannes's best actor award for its male leads including Samy Naceri, Jamel Debbouze and Roschdy Zem, and gained the blessing of Jacques Chirac. But the cast and crew are still circulating a petition for the government to issue African soldiers with back payments of army pensions frozen in the 1960s after the colonies gained their independence.

On August 15 1944, more than 100,000 African soldiers landed on the beaches of Provence before liberating Marseille and Toulon and fighting their way up to the bloody standoff with the Nazis in Alsace. Despite being overshadowed by the D-day landings in Normandy, the African assault was crucial in freeing occupied France. More than 23 nationalities from the French empire fought to free the motherland, but were referred to disparagingly as indigènes, or "natives". They suffered racism and humiliation, were denied the same rations as French soldiers and, after the war, received pensions sometimes 10 times lower than the French.

Mr Lalleg, who inspired one of the characters in the film, came from an educated Algerian family. He told the Guardian: "My father said to me, 'You're grown up now, you must do your bit.' I volunteered because I wanted to defend a cause, to free France from the Nazis. To me, France was the motherland."

But the discrimination in Europe was far from the liberty, fraternity and equality that many of his north African comrades were fighting for. After gruelling campaigns in Tunisia and Italy, Mr Lalleg landed in Provence and was injured twice in Alsace, before falling in love with a local factory worker whom he later returned to marry.

"We helped win the war, but afterwards no one appreciated us. Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians didn't have the same pension rights as French soldiers. It is unjust and should have been rectified long ago," he said.

The film's director, Rachid Bouchareb, who grew up in an Algerian family in Paris's run-down immigrant suburbs, said he wanted to rescue an important part of his ancestors' history from "national amnesia", and make the interior minister and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, reconsider his draconian views on immigrants.

A backlash against the film has already begun. France, which once ruled more than a third of Africa, has for the past year been plunged into soul-searching over its colonial past. Last year Mr Chirac was forced to repeal a new law urging teachers to stress the positive role of the "French presence overseas".

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...881051,00.html

[Al-khiyal]

Some more details here

[Al-khiyal]

Demonstrating anew the power of motion pictures to effect political change, French President Jacques Chirac is expected to restore full pensions to the 80,000 North African troops who fought for the country against the Germans after France was liberated in August 1944. According to today's (Tuesday) London Times, Chirac made the decision, which will cost more than $190 million, after viewing the film Indigènes (Days of Glory), which describes how some 250,000 colonial soldiers were used as cannon fodder and were neglected after France withdrew from Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria after the war. Hamlaoui Mekachera, France's Minister for Veterans, who is of Algerian origin, told the Times that Chirac was moved by the film. "There is an obvious injustice. We must put an end to it," he said.

Movie moves French President

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - A French film about the poorly rewarded sacrifices by African troops to free occupied France has drawn praise in Algeria, but veterans say Paris has other hard truths to confront about its record in its former colony.

"Indigenes" - "Days of Glory" in English - tells the story of four North Africans who fight their way through Italy and France to help free their colonial master from Nazi occupation in World War Two.

The Africans are told their sacrifices will bring them the same rewards and recognition as their French comrades.

Instead they are used like cannon fodder by officers to expose German machine-gun positions, are passed up for promotion and end up with far smaller pensions than French troops.

After seeing a preview of the film, French President Jacques Chirac demanded last month that the pensions of thousands of overseas veterans be raised to the same level as those of their French peers.

"Chirac's decision is fair but it doesn't mean we are going to forget about what happened during the occupation of our country," said 80-year-old Abderahmane Choeib, one of 80,000 Algerians who helped liberate France.

In May 1945, thousands of Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence as Europe celebrated victory over Nazi Germany were killed in a crackdown by French forces.

A savage war to end more than a century of French domination began in 1954, involving brutality and torture on both sides and costing hundreds of thousands of lives - Algiers says 1.5 million - before independence came in 1962.

To many Algerian Second World War veterans, France's resistance to demands for independence was a betrayal.

"I defended France. But when in 1945 I heard about the massacre of my people in Algeria by the French army, I got hot with anger," said veteran Mesbah Tahar, 82.

Feelings run high even among younger generations. Some who saw the film in Algiers said the French government should apologise for acts of violence during the colonial period.

"Instead of giving them (Algerian veterans) freedom as a reward, France massacred their people," one student told Reuters after seeing the film.

France is keen to retain its strong commercial and cultural influence in Algeria, Africa's second-largest country which is appealing for foreign investment to help rebuild after more than a decade of civil war.

Paris wants a new friendship treaty it says will set aside the painful burden of the past but has hesitated over Algerian demands for a clear apology, fearing huge compensation claims. Animosity and disagreements over events of long ago rumble on.

In July, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika raised the temperature by saying France's 130-year rule of the north African country was one of the "most barbaric forms of colonisation in history".

Algeria's government - led by the National Liberation Front (FLN) which spearheaded the resistance against France - has not reacted to Chirac's pensions decision, despite positive comments from Morocco, Tunisia and some West African states.

Last year, France's National Assembly approved a law referring to the "positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa". Bouteflika said it was "hard not to be revolted" by the law, which was later repealed.

Analysts say links of trade, investment, family and culture mean a crisis in French-Algerian relations is unlikely, barring the occasional upset.

But "Indigenes" director Rachid Bouchareb, who grew up in an Algerian immigrant family in a poor Paris suburb, said France needed to be more frank with itself.

"We must tell all the story," Bouchareb told Reuters at the film's Algerian premier. "I think France is ready to know about its history."

War film revives painful memories for Algerians

[Al-khiyal]

Rachid Bouchareb awarded Silver Hugo Special Jury Prize at Chicago International Film Festival

[nesreen]

Apparently , Chirac heard the last message on Les Indigenes and is going to do something about the over due pensions .. Good .

[Mnarvi-DZ]

yeah good