Outside the law
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Outside the law |
| Original title | Hors-la-loi |
| Country of production | France , Algeria |
| original language |
Arabic French |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 140 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rachid Bouchareb |
| script | Rachid Bouchareb |
| music | Armand Amar |
| camera | Christophe Beaucarne |
| cut | Yannick Kergoat |
| occupation | |
| |
Hors-la-loi (literally “outlaws”) is a French-Algerian feature film from 2010, written and directed by Rachid Bouchareb . Algeria contributed almost a quarter of the budget. The historical action drama deals with the independence struggle of the Arab Algerians who wanted to free their homeland from the rule of the colonial power France. Only at the beginning of the film takes place in North Africa and describes the massacre of Sétif on May 8, 1945. The rest of the story takes place in France, with Arabs who have moved to France, who work in factories and live in tin shelters on the outskirts. This section of the population has its own leadership structure and acts of terrorism occur on French soil. The narrative ends with the Paris massacre on October 17, 1961. The focus is on three fictional brothers. Sami Bouajila plays an FLN leader who has been politically indoctrinated in prison, Roshdy Zem plays a former Indochina fighter who joins him, and Jamel Debbouze the third brother who gets rich in the demimondial world. Like the director, the three actors are Beurs , French people of Maghrebian immigrants.
reception
According to Bouchareb, the intention was not only to present dry historical facts, but also to entertain with a genre plot based on crime films and westerns. Even before its release, the film sparked a debate in France about how accurately the events, particularly the Sétif massacre, were portrayed historically. Historians, a veterans' association, parliamentarians and the then Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand were involved . The Defense Ministry's historical service complained that the film portrayed the massacre of May 8, 1945 as one of Europeans against Arabs, even though it was exactly the other way around. The historian Benjamin Stora , renowned as an expert on the Algerian War, proved that the film had many factual errors.
The production ran in the competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2010 , where the cinema-goers had to endure a double security scan and bag check, and was Algerian nominee for the Oscar for best foreign language film 2011.
"It is a militant, accusatory and irreconcilable film", judged Jürg Altwegg in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , and noted an "excessive and ideological representation and interpretation of Sétif". It is true that Bouchareb shows the fanaticization and "creeping dehumanization that every terrorist movement carries with it," said Tobias Kniebe in the Süddeutsche Zeitung . But he didn't think it was a cinematic success, because the attempt to put a lot of story into the drama seemed "a little too strenuous"; "Confessions to the freedom of Algeria or the emotional state of the characters are always a bit wooden and declamatory."
Web links
- Outside the Law in the Internet Movie Database (English)
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rachid Bouchareb in the “Interview” on DVD, 5:30
- ↑ Rachid Bouchareb in the “Interview” on the DVD, 1:55
- ^ Clarisse Fabre: La polémique enfle autour du film "Hors-la-loi" . In: Le Monde , May 5, 2010, p. 25
- ↑ a b Jürg Altwegg: The battle of memories. France's cinema overcomes the Algerian war . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 30, 2010, p. 35
- ↑ a b Tobias Kniebe: Memories of previous lives . Cannes report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 22, 2010, p. 14