MON COLONEL / MY COLONEL at the 2006 Thessaloniki Film Festival
by Andre Soares
This past Sunday, Greek president Karolos Papoulias attended the premiere of the French-Belgian co-production Mon colonel / The Colonel at the 47th Thessaloiniki Film Festival.
Directed by Laurent Herbiet, making his feature-film début, and co-produced by Greek-born French resident Costa-Gavras (who, with Jean-Claude Grumberg, also co-wrote the screenplay based on a novel by Francis Zamponi), Mon colonel deals with a theme that many in France would like to either forget or pretend it never happened.
Going back and forth between the 1990s and 1956, the period of Algeria’s war for independence from France, the film depicts the psychological and legal procedures that transform a young French lieutenant into a torturer. The Parisian daily Le Monde has called it "far too schematic. But its strength of conviction is quite real."
Not surprisingly, at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Costa-Gavras explained that his film’s portrayal of war crimes abetted by so-called democratic societies are to be seen as a metaphor for the present "war on terror."
Mon colonel stars Olivier Gourmet, Robinson Stévenin, Cécile de France, and veteran Charles Aznavour.
Source: Athens News Agency
Interview with Laurent Herbiet at Excessif.com (in French)
Australian Film Institute’s 2006 AFI Awards
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2006
THE LAST EMPEROR Censored in Iran
2006 Asian Festival of 1st Films Nominees
Leeds International Film Festival - 2006 Awards
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I recall half Algerian beauty Isabelle Adjani being lambasted over her political views involving the way that Algerians were being treated by France. I think that was the year she recited passages from the Satanic Verses as the Cesar Awards. I think that’s around the time the rumors that she had died of AIDS were published in the papers. So I don’t blame Costa-Gavras for being diplomatic.
I remember that Isabelle Adjani recited passages from “The Satanic Verses” (which I have here, but I’ve never actually read it) after all the furor the book created, with some Muslims protesting, Iran offering cash in exchange for Salman Rushdie’s head, etc.
If I remember it correctly, Adjani’s speech was directed against those who believe in curbing freedom of speech whenever their religious sensibilities get offended.
I didn’t know she had spoken out against the mistreatment of Algerians in France, though that doesn’t surprise me.
(I do, however, remember the AIDS rumors. She even went on TV to say that she was ok. And she wasn’t the only AIDS-rumor-victim of the period. Burt Reynolds and Richard Gere — among others — were also dying of AIDS in the 1980s…)
salut ces moi chebli de setif algerie jai fait le film avec vous c le moudjahie tueur de hamou,jaime bien avoir des rolle dans vos jolie filme