28/08/2003 - A brave film to tell the dramatic story of a French-Algerian poet who is killed by the secret services

Martine De Clermont-Tonnere’s MACT Productions has two films at Venice, Pornography by the Polish director Kolski and Le soleil assassiné, directed by Abdelkrim Bahloul. The latter had “a small budget for a courageous film" comments De Clermont-Tonnere. The film is about the French-Algerian poet, Jean Senac, who stayed in Alergia after the country’s declaration of independence in 1962 and who was then killed by the secret services for his fight for freedom of speech. This story was a perfect way to re-visit "a common piece of history shared between two countries and to understand the bad side of today’s fundamentalism. We were frightened that the film may be too biased but we found a way of getting it launched".

The protagonist is played by a very good Charles Berling, who is surrounded by a series of extraordinary young actors with Algerian origins, and you can’t help thinking of Pier Paolo Pasolini. "I was also thinking about him when I wrote the film – says the Algerian director – the two events are very similar and historically, they happened very close together. But at least they found the perpetrator of the crime in Pasolini’s case". Bahloul explains how he didn’t have any problems in his home country: "In France they advised me to change the screenplay, but the current Algerian government wants to open a discussion about our history, to talk about the civil war that led to 200,000 deaths and destroyed the country. My film was accepted. Now we have to ask ourselves who was responsible for that murder". To quote a phrase from the film: "The aim of poetry is to be like life put into practice".

(Translated from Italian)