Obéir pour se libérer: stratégies d’héroïsation dans le film Indigènes de Rachid Bouchareb

Abstract

This article re-examines the common understanding of heroism in Rachid Bouchareb’s 2006 film  Days of Glory ( Indigènes). It challenges the premise that the four Maghrebian infantrymen at the centre of the picture are in fact fighting in the French ranks in order to primarily serve mainland France. Stylistic, rhetoric and filmic analyses of the film will show that, instead, enrolling in the French army provides the Arab soldiers with an opportunity to – paradoxically – assert their identity as free subjects. The result of this approach is twofold: while inscribing the protagonists of  Days of Glory in the classical heroic tradition, where obedience and self-government are often complementary, it also expounds the director’s militant desire to define the North African immigrant as both France’s historical ally and an autonomous subject.