Presented Monday evening, the film parallels the stories of Malik Oussekine and Abdel Benyahia, two young French people from North African immigration killed on December 6, 1986 in Paris and Pantin by police officers.

Two stories, two relatively forgotten destinies.

While a series devoted to Malik Oussekine was broadcast two weeks ago on Disney +, is it the anniversary date, in October - 35 years - of the events that prompted the director to take an interest in the subject?

"It's more the personal clock that went off," he told AFP.

"I wanted to do it for a long time but I had other films to make before," he continues.

According to him, if there has been, until now, no cinematographic adaptation of this drama, it is "because France is very late compared to the United States on questions of memory".

Actor Reda Kateb, director Rachid Bouchareb and actress Lyna Khoudri PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA AFP

"There are memory topics that are difficult and we have to wait until France is completely ready to talk about them. It may take time," he observes.

Pioneer

Born in 1953 in Paris and brought up in the suburbs of Paris, Rachid Bouchareb, whose parents are from Algeria, grew up alongside eight brothers and sisters.

After a professional training, he joined a film school with "lots of film ideas in mind".

After a first short film, he directed his first film "Bâton Rouge".

But it was only a few years later, in 1991, that he rose to fame with "Cheb", the story of a young man expelled from France, where he had lived since he was a child, and who must start from scratch, in Algeria, a country he does not know.

The film won the Prix de la jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film.

It is the beginning of a rich cinematographic production which follows a common thread: the memory of North African and African immigration.

"All of a sudden, you find yourself a pioneer because you say: there, there are only American films about the landing, but nothing on the side. Well, I'm going to do it on the side," he says. .

The team of the film "Our brothers" in Cannes on May 24, 2022 LOIC VENANCE AFP

"I did not make movies to say" + wait, you forgot this story + but to talk about mine, he assures AFP.

I rather wanted to tell what I heard growing up, what I had seen with my own eyes (…) And these things were also very cinematographic”.

But if his films can have a positive impact on the lives of the people he portrays film after film, and if they allow these stories to resonate in everyone's head "then there, yes, it's interesting", judge- he.

A few years later, he again made an impression with "Indigènes" (2006), the journey of forgotten soldiers of the first French army recruited in Africa which caused a sensation in Cannes and earned its performers a collective interpretation prize.

In 2010, he told, in "Hors la loi" (2010), the story of three brothers against the backdrop of the Algerian war and reunited with Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila.

The film, which opens with the massacres of Sétif, on May 8, 1945, created controversy.

It was presented the same year in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Each time, the films trigger a whole movement (...) we start a locomotive and the cinema is a locomotive", he says when asked about the reception of his films.

© 2022 AFP