CANNES: Director Rachid Bouchareb’s wonderfully-crafted and acted Hors la loi (Outside the Law), which weaves a fictional story around the real events of the Setif massacre of May 8, 1945, and the subsequent violent Algerian resistance against France, has predictably triggered a huge uproar at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival.
Security was tightened in and around the Palais des Festivals for the screening of the film on Friday as protesters marched towards the venue to call for a ban on the French-backed film. Police intervention was needed to prevent the situation from going out of hand.
Ever since Outside the Law was selected to compete for the festival’s big prize, the Palme d’Or, many French political groups accused Bouchareb of ‘falsifying’ history although none of them had seen the fresh-off-the-oven film. They exhorted the Cannes Film Festival organisers to drop the film from the official selection.
The filmmaker, while defending his creative right to tell the colonial story from the Algerian point of view, struck a conciliatory note. “The French, Algerians, North Africans and Africans, especially the younger generations, need to know about their colonial past,” he said.
“Those who were at the heart of these events have a contribution to make - they represent the living memory. It is about bringing together and respecting these different points of view.”
“The violent reaction surrounding the film is a little surprising especially when people haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “The purpose of this film is essentially to help the younger generations on both sides move towards genuine reconciliation and come to grips with their past. Outside the Law is not an anti-French film.”
Outside the Law, co-produced and part funded by France, has entered the Competition as an Algerian film.
It homes in on three Algerian brothers who survive the Setif massacre but lose their home and family. The eldest brother joins the French Army and goes away to fight in Indochina while the second finds himself in a Paris prison for espousing the hardline cause of Algerian independence. The youngest decides to make his fortune in the shady bars and boxing halls of Paris. Their destinies intertwine once again when they reunite in the French capital to take their battle forward.
The movie depicts the massacre that took place in Setif and Guelma even as France celebrated the defeat of fascist forces in Europe. A parade of Algerians was fired upon by colonial security men and summary executions were carried out on the streets of the two towns.
Bouchareb said, “It is time for French and Algerian historians to work together in complete freedom to write the shared experience of the two countries without the intrusion of controversies surrounding the Algerian War.”
Bouchareb’s previous film, Indigenes - Days of Glory, was about North Africans who fought alongside French soldiers to liberate France from the Nazi occupation. The film was very well received when it screened as part of the Cannes competition in 2006.
The narrative of Outside the Law, Bouchareb revealed, is based on real people and experiences. “All the main characters and storylines are based on people we met and interviewed,” he points out.
