Mathieu Vadepied’s latest film, “Tirailleurs”, produced by Omar Sy who also plays the role of Bakary Diallo, looks back on the little-known story of Africans enlisted in the French army during the First World War. A necessary film, to be seen for its historical impact.
1917. Bakary Diallo (Omar Sy) enlists in the French army to join Thierno (Alassane Diong), his 17-year-old son, who has been forcibly recruited. Sent to the front, father and son will have to face the war together. Galvanized by the ardor of his officer who wants to lead him to the heart of the battle, Thierno will free himself and learn to become a man, while Bakary will do everything to save him from the fighting and bring him back safe and sound.
“Tirailleurs”, directed by Mathieu Vadepied, to whom we owe the feature film “La vie en grand” and the series “In therapy”, is produced by Omar Sy. This means that the actor’s involvement in this project is strong. The film focuses on the father-son relationship by avoiding trench scenes seen and reviewed in other productions.
>> To see: the trailer of the film
But “Tirailleurs” above all highlights an often forgotten part of history: between 1914 and 1918, nearly 500,000 soldiers from the colonies were sent to the front by France. Soldiers from countries that made up French West Africa, namely the current Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania, had thus been enlisted to serve France even though most, like Bakary Diallo in the film, didn’t even speak French.
A film necessary for his duty of memory
“A film more interesting for its historical impact than for its cinematographic reality, but it’s already not bad,” says Rafael Wolf, film critic for RTS. The last five minutes of the film are, for the critic, “absolutely prodigious”, “unfortunately the rest of the film is much less so, because the staging is quite flat”.
For Vincent Adatte, film critic, the film is uneven. “What is interesting about the father-son relationship in the film is that it reverses the relationship of authority. The son, Thierno, will become the superior of his father, Bakary. Which is almost blasphemous in the Fulani culture in which it is always the elders who have the power”.
An image from the film “Tirailleurs” with Omar Sy and Alassane Diong. [Gaumont]
For the two critics, the film is necessary as it was necessary to evoke this page of history. “Even if it had already been mentioned in ‘Camp de Thiaroye’, a magnificent film by Ousmane Sembène released in 1987, which tells how Senegalese skirmishers of the Second World War were machine-gunned by the French army because they asked to be paid”, says Vincent Adatte.
The film “Tirailleurs” by Mathieu Vadepied does its duty of memory, an important, necessary duty, in an honorable way.
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“Tirailleurs”, by Mathieu Vadepied, currently on view in French-speaking cinemas.