Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle try to understand what pushed some 200,000 “Muslims in Algeria” to line up alongside the “colonizers” during the Algerian war (1954-1962).
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traitors in their country, parias here. This is the fate reserved for harkis, these Algerians who fought on the side of the French during the Algerian war (1954-1962), of which Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle retrace history. Drawing on images of exceptional archives, testimonies of former harkis, army executives and historians, the duo, who, for years, has explored contemporary history through punchy films (including The apocalypse series), evokes the subject in a clear, honest and nuanced way.
“If the previous generation has flushed out the ghosts of Vichy, I think that ours and the next will be interested in those of the Algerian war, explained Isabelle Clarke, in 2010. Our goal is not denounce, but to question, understand and start a dialogue. “The authors worked with historian Jean-Jacques Jordi (from exodus to exile. Rapatrian and black feet in France, Harmattan , 1994; Les Harkis, an buried memory, with Mohand Hamoumou, otherwise, 2008). The commentary is read by the actor Said Taghmaoui, from Algerian immigration.
tenacious prejudices
The injury. The tragedy of the harkis should make it possible to overcome still stubborn prejudices and to better understand what pushed these 200,000 “Muslims in Algeria” to line up alongside the “colonizers”. A commitment experienced in Algeria as a betrayal and which cost the lives of tens of thousands of them at the time of independence. Those who, to escape the massacres, emigrated with their families at the same time as the French soldiers left the territory were treated, in France, like livestock, parked in camps like that of Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales), making their difficult integration.
This story remains an injury on both sides of the Mediterranean. “The Harki problem touches the question of Algerian national identity. Any form of understanding towards the harki phenomenon would be experienced as a kind of rehabilitation of the colonial system. So that we can achieve this story, it The voice of harkis and their children must be heard even more, “explains the historian Benjamin Stora, one of the documentary stakeholders, author, in 2021, at the request of Emmanuel Macron, of a report on colonization and The Algerian War.
This is one of the forces of this film: we hear the word of former harkis who explain under what circumstances they joined the French army, tell how they lived these years of combat against brothers , cousins. We can review in video the beautiful fiction of Alain Tasma, Harkis (2006), who retraces with emotion and realism the drama experienced by these profrançais Muslims after the Evian agreements of 1962.