Algerian War Drama Screens As French Police Mobilize on Cannes

As the bleary press descended on the Palais this morning to screen Rachid Bouchareb's controversial film Hors La Loi (Outside of the Law), they were welcomed by hundreds of gun-toting gendarmes and subjected to extra pat-downs.

French police are gearing up for potentially massive demonstrations today and tonight by France's far-right National Front party. The object of their ire is director Bouchareb, whom they accuse of whitewashing history in Hors La Loi, which portrays the Nazi-like brutality inflicted on the Algerian people by French colonialists in the run-up to Algeria's independence in 1962.

Sensing a storm of anti-French sentiment, AFP is reporting this morning that Bernard Brochand, Cannes mayor and member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party, is planning to hold a ceremony in town for what he called the "French victims" of the Algerian war.

The film opens in 1925; a family living in rural Algeria is approached by a French soldier and forced to give their home. French storm troopers invade Algerian villages, lining up innocent people and shooting them. After the family is ripped from their home, the diasporic sons pursue disparate lives: Messaoud fights for France in Indochina, Abdelkader joins the Algerian Nationalist Party, and Säid becomes a club and boxing promoter in Paris.

The three brothers soon reunite in an Algerian ghetto in France, where they organize and take up arms to fight the French -- Algerian's version of the Jewish ghetto uprisings of World War II.

While watching the sepia-toned film unfold, it's clear French-Algerian Bouchareb -- whose previous films include 2009's London River and Days of Glory (nominated for an Academy Award in 2006 for Best Foreign Film) -- intimately knew the tale he was trying to tell. Bouchareb was smart to tell a gripping, powerful story rather than attempt to make some grand sweeping message about the French atrocities during the Algerian war for independence. He never disingenuously forces pathos and emotion on the complex set of events surrounding the war -- though, true, a good deal of the bloodshed is spilled at the hands of the brutal French, the Algerian nationals, too, participated in violent acts.

Of all the competition films screened so far, the historical thriller Hors La Loi is perhaps the most conventional. And with Cannes being Cannes, that means highfalutin critics will turn their collective noses up and pooh-pooh it. The question is whether Tim Burton's jury will see it that way, too. The Festival likes nothing more than making political statements, and bestowing an award, or awards, on this film would surely cause a firestorm of controversy throughout France.

Stay tuned -- the awards will be handed out Sunday.