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You are here: Home Leisure Arts & Culture Film breaks silence of Algerian war atrocities

10/10/2007Film breaks silence of Algerian war atrocities

A new film described as France's "Platoon" tackles the savagery of the Algerian war, broaching a topic that until recently remained taboo.

10 October 2007

PARIS (AFP) - A new film described as France's "Platoon"  tackles the savagery of the Algerian war, broaching a topic that until recently remained taboo and helping France face the demons of its colonial past.

"L'Ennemi Intime" (Intimate Enemy) from director Florent-Emilio Siri is the first big-budget Hollywood-style film that combines action scenes and psychological drama about France's "dirty war" in Algeria from 1954 to 1962.

 

The film tells the story of idealistic young lieutenant Terrien, played by Benoit Magimel, who takes command of a desolate French army outpost high in the mountains of Kabylia. 

As Terrien wages a brutal campaign to wipe out National Liberation Front (FLN) rebels -- resorting to torture and napalm bombs -- he loses his own personal battle to retain his humanity.

"This is the first French war movie that shows the war in its raw form,"  said Patrick Rotman, a well-known documentary filmmaker, who wrote the script for the film based on interviews with dozens of Algerian war veterans.

"For a long time, the Algerian war was a taboo subject among the general public.  Everyone had their view, their recollection of the war that they held up against each other."

"It was all very painful and very difficult, but I think we are coming out of this period. We can finally talk about this war and show it on screen, show the violence on all sides -- the violence of the FLN, the French army torture and the use of napalm," Rotman said.

Some two million French men served in Algeria but it was only in 1999 that the French parliament adopted a law recognising the war that ended with Algeria's independence from France in 1962.

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