RACHID BOUCHAREB

Director of Indigènes/Days of Glory

Rachid Bouchareb was born in Paris in 1953 to parents who had recently immigrated from Algeria. After receiving his degree from the Center for the Study and Research of Image and Sound, he began work in television, first as an assistant director, then as a director of TV movies for various French networks (SFP, TF1, Antenna 2) from 1977 to 1984. At the same time, he began making short films; his first short film, Perhaps the Sea, was selected for screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1983.

He made his first feature film, Baton Rouge, two years later, while continuing to make short films and work in television. Baton Rouge tells the story of three friends who are obliged to move to the United States to find work. In it we can find the major themes that will come to embody Bouchareb’s work: the themes of identity, the (often failed) effort to return to one’s roots, and the frustrations of the immigrant experience.

With his next feature film, Dust of Life (1995), Bouchareb achieved international status. This film, the story of young Amerasian woman (her father a Black American soldier who abandoned his Vietnamese family with the fall of Saigon), won numerous awards, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Little Senegal (2001) is another film about crossing cultures—this time, however, within the Black community. Its protagonist, played by the wonderful, prolific African actor, Sotigui Kouyaté, from Burkina Faso, leaves his African home for the United States, in an effort to reconnect with long-lost family—i.e., with the descendents of African slaves torn from his people centuries before. He winds up in the Little Senegal section of Harlem, encountering one problem after another. This film places the complex and often difficult relationship between Africans and African-Americans front and center, presenting it mainly through African eyes. It achieved a great deal of success at international festivals (and was a favorite at CFAF 14/2004).

However, it is with his most recent film, Indigènes/Days of Glory (2006) that Bouchareb has moved to a new level of success and renown. The story of a group of Algerian men who volunteer to fight in France during World War II, it is both a gripping war film and a powerful tale of misplaced illusions and miscommunication. The film’s four leading actors were joint winners of the Best Acting award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and this film too was nominated for Best Foreign Film (submitted by Algeria) at this year’s Oscars. The film made a huge impact in France, where it led President Chirac to restore the pensions of the veterans from North Africa (they were frozen in 1959) and to put them at the same level as their fellow veterans from France.

Along with his work as a director, Bouchareb is active in the film world as a producer. Together with Jean Bréhart, he created 3B Productions in 1989 and Tadrat Films in 1997; through them he has he produced films from around the world: Europe, the Balkans, Canada, Vietnam, Africa, and the Middle East. One of his most fruitful collaborations as a producer has been with the French director Bruno Dumont, with whom he has made La Vie de Jésus, L’Humanité, and a number of other films.

Bouchareb’s next film project is a continuation of Days of Glory, following the surviving soldier back to his home in Setif, Algeria, on VE Day (May 8, 1945). This day of joy for the Allied nations became a day of infamy in Algeria—the beginning of the Setif Massacre, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of 30,000 people and, Bouchareb feels, was the beginning of armed rebellion against colonialism in Algeria.

--Michael Dembrow

RETURN to CFAF 18.