Rural Algeria, 1959. A flock of sheep shuffles down a small lane, and two old men greet each other. One of them returns to his house and discovers a box – inside of which is the severed head of his eldest son. The mother wails, and the title of the film appears in big print? Harkis, a term alluding to the Algerians (among them the beheaded man) who joined the French military to fight against their own independence-seeking compatriots during the anti-colonial war in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
This shocking opening sequence lays bare the cruelty that ravaged Algeria in that era, and director Philippe Faucon is adamant about where the blame lies. A chronological account of the lives of several of these auxiliaries during the final three years of the Algerian War, Harkis lays bare the way French colonial authorities coerced these young men into their ranks, forced them to become unwilling henchmen or cannon fodder, and eventually abandoned them to their sorry fate when they withdrew in 1962.
Born in Morocco, the son of a French soldier who served in Algeria at the height of the war, Faucon has already explored this historical epoch in his 2005 film The Betrayal (Le trahison). It unravels the explosive racial dynamics within a Harkis unit as its conscientious French squad leader investigates the presence of a pro-independence mole among his ranks. Unlike the suspenseful, Rashomon-like Betrayal, Harkis unfolds like a straightforward primer for the uninitiated, with the narrative constantly ushered forward by on-screen intertitles marking dates which may or may not mean anything.
It’s beyond doubt that Harkis, which bowed at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, has its heart in the right place. And at the right time, too: Faucon admitted he was driven to revisit this historical era because of the worrying normalisation of far-right, anti-Muslim demagoguery coming from unreconstructed xenophobes in France. The film is certainly essential at a time like this, and very accessible and well-made too, with dollops of gritty human drama that the Dardenne brothers, who co-produced, would readily approve.
Just like Rachid Bouchareb’s Days of Glory, the 2006 Cannes prize-winner about four North African men’s rite of passage in the liberation of France during the Second World War, Harkis begins by introducing its protagonists’ rhyme and reason for fighting in the French colonial war. Some, like Salah (Mohammed Mouffok) and Kaddour (Amine Zorgane), need the money to keep their struggling families afloat; others like Djilali (Alaedinne Ouali), the younger brother of the beheaded Harki, are driven by revenge and aspirations to assimilate themselves into the French nation proper.
And then there’s something more sociopathic, in the shape of captured anti-colonial guerrilla fighters who betrayed their comrades and joined the French army to find refuge. In Harkis, this is embodied by Krimou (El Mehdy El Hakimy), who was coerced to reveal the whereabouts of Algerian National Liberation Front cells under brutal torture. Now a wanted man in the eyes of the pro-independence fighters, he switches sides and goes to grotesque extremes to prove his loyalty to his new masters.
By the time the story begins in 1959, however, the French are already losing their grip in Algeria. While Faucon is intent in describing the Harkis’ ordeals while in service, he’s equally keen to reflect on the regular French army’s betrayal of their local “minions” as the war draws to a close. One pro-Harki voice is that of Lieutenant Pascal (Theo Cholbi), an officer who is visibly empathetic towards his underlings. He even compares the pro-independence fighters’ punishment of traitors (the beheading, for example) with atrocities committed by the French army.
Pascal’s defence of his men eventually led to a conflict with his own cynical superiors and an attempt to save his Harki underlings from harm. It’s the final part of an eventful film, and Faucon and his editor Sophie Mandonnet have managed to condense a lot of details and messages into a concise feature of merely 82 minutes in an effective and engaging enterprise. Laurent Fénart has reproduced the rugged geography of rural Algeria in all its arid and rocky glory, while Amine Bouhafa’s original score provides the melancholic ambience of desperation in which the characters struggle. It’s a worthy addition to Faucon’s social-conscious filmography, and yet another crucial component to fuel the conversation about this long-suppressed chapter in French history.
Director: Philippe Faucon
Screenwriters: Philippe Fuacon, Yasmina Nini-Faucon, Samir Benyala
Cast: Theo Cholbi, Mohamed Mouffok, Amine Zorgane, El Mehdy El Hakimy
Producers: Philippe Faucon, Yasmina Nini-Faucon, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Delphine Tomson
Executive producers: Nadim Cheikrouha, Saïd Hamich Benlarbi
Director of photography: Laurent Fénart
Editor: Sophie Mandonnet
Production designer: Paul Rouschop
Music composer: Amine Bouhafa
Sound designer: Benoit de Clerck, Vincent Nouaille, Thomas Gauder
Production companies: Istiqlal Films, Les Films du Fleuve
World sales: Pyramide
Venue: Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival
In Arabic and French
82 minutes
