Ep 109 – Days of Glory – North Africa’s War for France
There is a quote in this episode, attributed to French politician Jacques Soustelle, that says: “Free France was African.” At the height of their involvement, two-thirds of the French Liberation Army were from French colonial territories. The first territorial base Charles de Gaulle had was Chad. And yet, at the liberation of Paris, the French army went out of their way to replace the North African soldiers who were supposed to march in, because they did not want the optics of Africans liberating the French capital.
Days of Glory (2006) is about the gap between what these men did and what France was prepared to attribute to them. It follows a fictional group of North African soldiers through Italy, Provence, and Alsace, and it thoughtfully shows the personal struggles and the institutional racism baked into the Free French forces. The ensemble acting is genuinely good. Our favourite was Corporal Abdelkader, the one guy in the film who keeps hoping it will all be worth it, right up until it very clearly is not.
We have some caveats. The pacing is uneven, the stakes of the wider war are never quite established, and the ending doesn’t land the way it should. The film was, however, genuinely instrumental in changing French law. North African veterans had been receiving pensions frozen at post-independence amounts. By 2006, some were getting less than 20% of what French veterans were paid. Legislation was changed after the film’s release. That’s Cinema for you.
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