) are North Africans who fought in the French Army to drive the Germans out of a motherland most had never seen. The movie, a French, Algerian and Moroccan co-production, was a recent Academy Award nominee for best foreign film, and its ensemble cast collectively won the best actor award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. is both an exceptional film about war, with taut action sequences and intimate portraits of the lives of ordinary soldiers, and an important film that was made with a purpose.
At its core, the movie is about four soldiers from North Africa who enlist in the 7th Algerian Infantry, part of the Free French Army, in 1943. They receive rudimentary military training in Morocco before being rushed into battle against the Germans in Italy. There, they inflict the first defeat on the German army by French forces since France was overrun in 1940.
The soldiers then move on to France itself to Provence, the Rhone Valley, the Vosges forest and finally to Alsace, near the German border always given the most dangerous, deadly assignments. For Said (Jamel Debbouze), enlisting is a way to escape the poverty of his remote Algerian village. For Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), an idealist and an educated man, fighting for France is the best way to fight for democracy and an end to discrimination.
Yassir (Samy Naceri), a Berber from Morocco, enlists for the money. We never learn why Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) enlists, or why he has bad luck tattooed on his chest in Arabic. All four are major actors in the French film industry today.
Debbouze, who helped finance , is particularly popular for his comedic roles. (He will soon be seen here in Luc Besson s movie, Angel-A.") However, Bouajila will most likely be the only familiar face to American film fans, as he played a key role of Samir in , the prescient pre-9/11 film starring Denzel Washington and Annette Bening.
It was our duty to make this movie, says director and co-writer Rachid Bouchareb in The Making of Days of Glory the DVD s main bonus feature. Like his stars, Bouchareb is a French man of North African descent, and he and his cast express their commitment to honor their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were among the 150,000 soldiers from the French colonies who fought in World War II and whose stories have long been ignored. doesn t flinch from showing the discrimination that took place within the Free French forces.
White soldiers receive promotions, eat better food and obtain leaves from combat, while the African troops continually slog it out with little recognition. And more subtle forms of discrimination exist within the ranks of the 7th Algerian Infantry. The few promotions that are handed out go to light-skinned French soldiers who lived in Algeria, rather than to the Arabs from North Africa or the black soldiers from sub-Saharan Africa.
Most promises of advancement offered to the North African troops turn out to be empty. ) are North Africans who fought in the French Army to drive the Germans out of a motherland most had never seen.
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