Outside The Law

Revolutionaries or terrorists? Freedom fighters or criminals? The Algerian Independence struggle 50 years ago has not been the subject of many films, with the Battle of Algiers the most famous. It is the setting for Bouchareb’s film of three brothers growing up in French Algeria, losing their father on VE day in Setif - where the French massacred thousands of protestors - and then meeting up again in 1950’s France, in the days of the FLN terror tactics. His outlook is humanist, not political, as he looks at the events that lead the three men to this point.

We had the first part of Bouchareb’s loose trilogy in 2007’s ‘Days of Glory’, which so impressed President Chirac that he changed the law on pensions to African war veterans, previously denied to them. The second part of the trilogy looks and feels more like an artistic Mobster movie than anything—sharp action in dark settings.