POUR LA FRANCE

2022 / 103 min / color

Aissa (Shaïn Boumedine), a young man of Algerian descent, dies under mysterious circumstances at a prestigious French military academy. While the institution refuses to take any responsibility for the unfortunate events that led to his death, his older, rebellious brother Ismael (an electrifying performance by Karim Leklou) tries to hold the family together. The complicated situation is made even more difficult by the appearance of the brothers’ long-estranged father, who remained in Algeria when their mother fled the country with her sons in search of a better life more than twenty years earlier. This unexpected event triggers painful memories in Ismael of his childhood and of the visit he paid to his brother, then living in Taipei, years later. Inspired in part by the director’s personal story, the film presents a variety of faces of toxic masculinity entangled in a dense web of characters and situations typical of their ethnicity and culture. Hami constructs a multilayered portrait of two brothers who are shaped by their cultural background and in particular by their difficult, tumultuous relationship with a violent father.

• Sarlat ICF – Best Actor (Karim Leklou)