Controversial Cannes entry probes France’s colonial history in Algeria

Controversial Cannes entry probes France’s past

CANNES, France — Security was beefed up Friday at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of the screening of “Outside the Law,” a movie about Algeria’s bloody struggle for independence from colonial master France that already had sparked a storm of controversy even before its premiere.

Security guards frisked journalists and other spectators ahead of the early morning press screening, going through their bags and even confiscating liquids, as a squadron of police officers looked on. The thorough searches were unusual at the Riviera cinema showcase, where security checks tend to be perfunctory.

The story of three Algerian brothers who were swept up in the North African country’s fight for independence, “Outside the Law” has come under fire from a conservative French lawmaker who called the film anti-French and it also has drawn criticism from veterans’ groups and others.

With groups threatening to stage protests at the movie’s red carpet premiere Friday evening, director Rachid Bouchareb appealed for calm.

“The film is not a battleground and was not made to trigger a standoff,” Bouchareb, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, said at a news conference. “I knew that France’s history and colonial past and its relations with Algeria remain very tense. That I knew. But that the movie has sparked such a violent reaction, I think it’s exaggerated.”

“Perhaps a sociologist could say why in France half a century later it’s still hard to look at the past. There’s certain reticence,” he said.

French troops occupied Algeria in 1830, and the nation was officially made a part of France about two decades later. It was a jewel in France’s colonial crown until Algeria won its independence in 1962 after years of bloody convulsions.

“Outside the Law” stars actors Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila, Frenchmen whose origins are in North Africa, as three brothers who join one of Algeria’s pro-independence movements after moving to a depressing shantytown outside of Paris.

The movie chronicles the bloody infighting between the factions, their attacks on French soil as well as the French government’s no-holds-barred attempts to stamp them out.

The movie is rife with long shootouts that recall the gangster movies of Brian de Palma or Martin Scorcese.

Overall “Outside the Law” comes off as a balanced portrait, showing atrocities committed on both sides.

This is not the first time Bouchareb has probed the somber reaches of France’s colonial history. The director has made a career out of it.

His 2006 film “Indigenes” starred the same trio of actors as Muslim soldiers from France’s North African colonies who risked their lives during World War II to free a country that treated them as second-class human beings. The movie exposed a long-standing injustice and pushed the government to change its policy of paying former colonial soldiers pensions that were a fraction of what French soldiers received.

“Outside the Law” was one of two movies about Algeria in competition at Cannes.

“Of Gods and Men” by French director Xavier Beauvois — which is based on the real-life beheading of seven French monks during Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s — screened earlier this week to mixed reviews.

Actor Debbouze said he hoped “Outside the Law” would help heal the scars on both sides of the Mediterranean.

“To be able to prepare the future, we have to agree on the past,” he said. “I need to explain (our common history) to my son in detail. … For that to happen, I need for all of us to be in agreement on this.”

Online: www.festival-cannes.fr/en.html