Ici on noie les algériens

Credits

Name: Ici on noie les algériens

Country: Algerien; Frankreich

Year of publication: 2011

Format: Digital

Color: color

Language : OF m. dt. UT

Duration: 90 Minuten

Direction: Adi, Yasmina

Screenplay: Adi, Yasmina

Camera: Didier, Laurent

Editing: Maurion, Audrey

Sound: Carrasco, Pierre

Abstract

The title of the film is taken from a piece of graffiti on the side of a bridge on the river Seine and means "Here they drown Algerians". The wording and the film recall a veiled chapter in French colonial history at the time of the Algerian war: a massacre of Algerians in the heart of Paris.
Following a call by the Algerian freedom movement FLN (National Liberation Front) on 17 October 1961, thousands of Algerians from Paris and the surrounding areas demonstrated against a curfew imposed by the French government. Their peaceful protest march was brutally broken up by the security forces. 50 years on, the filmmaker exposes the truth about this still veiled incident. Combining eye-witness accounts and previously unseen archive material, history and memories, the past and the present, the film reconstructs the different stages of events and reveals the strategies and methods put in place at the highest level of state: manipulating public opinion, systematically challenging all accusations, locking away all information in order to avoid any enquiry.