Medhi Lallaoui

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Who was Frantz Fanon, the author of Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, this Pan-African thinker and psychiatrist engaged in anti-colonialist struggles? Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon was not yet 20 years old when he landed, weapons in hand, on the beaches of Provence in August 1944 with thousands of soldiers from "Free France", most of whom had come from Africa, to free the country from Nazi occupation. He became a psychiatrist and ten years later joined the Algerians in their fight for independence. Died at the age of 36, he left behind a major work on the relationships of domination between the colonized and the colonizers, on the roots of racism and the emergence of a thought of a Third World in search of freedom. 60 years after his death, the film follows in the footsteps of Frantz Fanon, alongside those who knew him, to rediscover this exceptional man.

“Forgetting is complicit in recidivism,” says the commentary of this film dedicated to the demonstration of October 17, 1961 in Paris and the savage repression that followed. 11,538 Algerians will be arrested, which is reminiscent of the great Vel d’hiv roundup of July 16 and 17, 1942 where 12,884 Jews were arrested.
 The film brings together eyewitnesses including a priest, a peacekeeper, a couple of workers sympathetic to the Algerian cause, a lawyer, Paris municipal councilors including Claude Bourdet (then one of the leaders of the PSU and journalist to France Observateur), Gérard Monatte, the future police union leader, and the editor and writer François Maspero.

From the rights of minors before the juvenile court, young offenders from the neighborhoods of eastern Paris, or children of Algerian origin from the shantytowns of Nanterre, to the defense of colonized Kanaks and Polynesians; from the fight for conscientious objector status to the denunciation of torture and the death penalty, lawyer Jean-Jacques de Félice has been involved in every struggle. His pacifism knows no bounds: with organizations like Cimade, LDH, and the Louis-Lecoin Committee, he assists draft dodgers in numerous countries. These include Portuguese conscientious objectors refusing to fight in the wars in Angola and Mozambique, American deserters opposed to the Vietnam War, and Israeli objectors refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. It is no surprise that, as early as 1971, he was one of the very first lawyers representing the farmers of the Larzac plateau.

Two years after the May 13th, 2024, uprising in Kanaky-New Caledonia, the political situation in the archipelago still hasn't budged. From failed negotiations to vain attempts to force through change, the French government keeps trying to destroy a 40-year-old peace process by trying to exclude the Kanak liberation front (Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste) and its president, Christian Tein. After being detained for a year in continental France, the independantist leader and his comrades have resumed their work. They tell of their fight for the independence of their country, the ravages of colonisation and the mistreatment they have endured from the French government since the May 13th uprising.

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On September 5, 1960, the trial of about twenty French activists from the "Jeanson Network" began, supporters in the metropolis of the action of the Algerian FLN independence activists. But after a few days, the situation was reversed and the trial transformed into a political arena, it was the government, the army, their policy, it was the entire Algerian war whose trial began. Accused, witnesses, lawyers, overflowing a stunned court, transformed the courtroom into a tribune of the opposition. The trial coincided with the publication of the "Manifesto of the 121" on the right to insubordination, signed among others by Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur Adamov, Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, Marguerite Duras, Pierre Boulez, René Dumont, François Chatelet…

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May 8, 1945, the day of victory over Nazism, is also a day of mourning. In Algiers, thanks to demonstrations for victory, the Algerian flag appears for the first time, thus claiming independence. But in Sétif, the standard bearer is shot dead at the head of the procession and a riot breaks out. The colonial massacre that followed would extend to all of Constantine. The commission of inquiry never delivered its conclusions and an amnesty law erased the traces of this savage repression. Fifty years later, the file is open.

Mehdi Lallaoui's documentary begins where it all ended, in New Caledonia, with images of the ruins of the penal colony where many Commune insurgents were deported, including Louise Michel. The director thus tracks down all the still visible traces of the insurrectional movement, in the South Pacific but especially in Paris, by following Alain Dalotel, author of numerous works on the Commune (and who died on May 29, 2020 in Bagnolet). He also tracks down all the archives, allowing us to understand, with the means of communication and information of the time (and with a voice-over by Bernard Langlois), what contemporaries experienced between March and May 1871: their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their anger.

Through the commitment of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, this documentary traces the history of the march of the Kanak people in search of their independence. Between the raising of the Kanak flag in December 1984 and the funeral procession of the independence leader assassinated by one of his own on the island of Ouvéa in May 1989, there were years of struggles, dramas, palaver, hopes, of which Jean-Marie Tjibaou was one of the main actors. Will France be able to win the bet of a smooth decolonization of one of the last confetti of its empire? The authors meet the main protagonists of the "Tjibaou years", which were those of the Kanak people's dream of independence.