Days of Glory (2006)

Director, Rachid Bouchareb. (123min)
Released with the title Indigenes (‘Natives’) in French, the film looks at the experiences of North African men recruited into the French Army to fight for France through the eyes of an Algerian unit sent to take part in the liberation of France in 1944–45. The injustices and inequalities that come their way from the French military system even as they are fighting and dying for a country not their own are subtly handled; the climactic fight with a German company in a village in which the remnants of the Algerian unit has taken shelter is one of the best in recent cinema. About two thirds of the Free French Forces in 1944–45 were North Africans and black colonial soldiers who, following the war, had their Army pensions frozen by successive French governments; this injustice was partially reversed after the release of this film raised the question of their treatment for a new generation.