Like hundreds of thousands of Africans, young Thierno (Alassane Diong) was captured in his village in 1917 to serve alongside the French.
His father (Omar Sy, who plays in Fulani, a West African language) enlists to watch over him.
After Rachid Bouchareb in "Indigènes" (Second World War), Mathieu Vadepied films, hand-held camera, the crushed destiny of these men torn from their native land to fight on the front line, in a cold and unknown region, under the French uniform.
"We don't have the same memory but we have the same story", commented the star actor of Lupine on Netflix, Omar Sy, also co-producer of the film, in presentation of this opening night.
The Un Certain Regard selection presents 19 films including, for the first time at Cannes, a Pakistani feature.
Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, confided that "Tirailleurs" had arrived "quite late in the selection": "there are films like that which become obvious".
Beyond the din and the horror of war, Vadepied puts the tormented relationship of a father and his son at the center of his film.
Faced with Bakary who just wants to bring his boy home alive, Thierno, galvanized by military ambition, threatens to escape him.
The so-called "Senegalese" skirmishers (in fact from all over Africa) went up to the front alongside the soldiers from France.
Of the 200,000 who fought, 30,000 died on the battlefields of the Great War.
(lr) actors Jonas Bloquet, Alassane Diong, director Mathieu Vadepied and Omar Sy on the red carpet for the presentation of the film "Tirailleurs", May 18, 2022 at the Cannes Film Festival Valery HACHE AFP
"The figures vary according to the sources", recalls the press kit of the film, and "rare are the books, and even less the films, which retrace their history".
This military body was disbanded in 1960.
© 2022 AFP