Days of Glory (2006 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Days of Glory

Directed by	Rachid Bouchareb
Starring	Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Bernard Blancan
Release date(s)	2006
Running time	128 min.
Language	French
Budget	€ 14,4 million
IMDb profile

Days of Glory (French: Indigènes ) is a Drama French film directed by French-Algerian Rachid Bouchareb. The cast includes Sami Bouajila, Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem and Bernard Blancan. The film won the Prix d'interprétation masculine du Festival de Cannes at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to The Lives of Others.

As well as being successful as a war movie described as a kind of a North African "Saving Private Ryan", the film deals with discriminatory treatment of French Africans which is still an issue today, and led to a change in government policy.^[1]

1 Synopsis
2 Quotes
3 Modern relevance
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

A large number of "Indigènes" (Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccan "Goumiers") were enrolled in the French First Army of the Free French Forces, formed to liberate France after the Nazi occupation in World War II. The film portrays the recruitment of these soldiers and their participation in the campaigns in Italy and southern France. The army had been recruited in Africa in French colonies outside the control of the Vichy regime which collaborated with German commissioners, and of the 200,000 men, 130,000 were “Indigènes” (natives), around 80,00 were “pieds- noirs” (French colonials) and the remainder were young frenchmen who had escaped the Nazi occupation.^[2]

Four “Indigènes” in a mobile corps with a reputation for endurance and courage in close combat are sent to the front line, each with a different personal purpose as they fight their way through the Italian Campaign and on to Operation Dragoon to liberate France. One seeks booty, one has joined the army to escape poverty in hopes that it will be his family, one wants to marry and settle in France while the other is fighting in the hope of equality and recognition of the rights of the colonised Algerians.^[2] They come up against discrimination in the army.^[3]

[edit] Quotes

This film, it is a Post-It - Jamel Debbouze

[edit] Modern relevance

While each has his own motives, these native Africans have enlisted to fight for a France they have never seen. In the words of a wartime recruiting song the four actors sang at the Cannes Film Festival, "we come from the colonies to save the motherland, we come from afar to die, we are the men of Africa." The film shows a complex depiction of their shabby treatment in an army organisation prejudiced in favour of the European French, a wartime injustice which relates directly to continuing modern tensions.^[1]

The discrimination by the French authorities against these soldiers continued as successive French governments froze the war pensions of these indigenous veterans, and it was only after the film's release that the government policy was changed to bring foreign combatant pensions into line with what French veterans are paid.^[3]