Author: Kanayan Tamar

Times of Malta, Malta
Sept 2 2014

Venice festival tackles hard-hitting subjects

Films look at slaughter of Armenians and Indonesians

The Venice Film Festival has earned a reputation over the decades for
tackling controversial political and social issues head on, and this
year has been no exception.

German-born Turkish director Fatih Akin’s The Cut, shown on Sunday, is
a harrowing fictionalised look at the destruction of the Armenian
community in Ottoman Turkey during World War I which historians and
Armenians say was genocide.

Turkey denies this and says the widely cited death toll of 1.5 million
people is inflated.

Akin acknowledged at a news conference that he had received hate mail
about the film and even a death threat on Twitter, but said “please
don’t make too much out of that”.

“The film that Fatih made is the film that the Armenians have been
waiting for. Everybody always says, ‘When are we making a film, a film
about the Armenian genocide?’,” Simon Abkarian, one of the actors in
the film, said at a press conference.

“It took time. The first generation had to survive, the second
generation had to live and the third generation had to react and claim
what we had to claim, which is the recognition of the genocide, most
of it. And I think that one film is never enough to tell such a story,
we have to make more.”

Other festival films include a documentary, The Look of Silence, about
massacres in Indonesia in the mid-1960s where death squads killed as
many as 1.5 million people in purges following a failed communist
coup.

Loin des Hommes (Far from Men) is set at the beginning of the Algerian
war against French colonial rule in the 1950s and stars Viggo
Mortensen as a former major in the French army who is teaching in a
school in a remote part of the Atlas Mountains.

He is forced into a life-or-death desert trek with an Arab villager,
played by Reda Kateb, that makes them overcome cultural distrust and
learn to rely on one another.

Mortensen said he thought it was the most powerful, and even
subversive, film about the Algerian conflict since Gillo Pontecorvo’s
famous The Battle of Algiers of 1966.

“There’s nothing nowadays more subversive than loving and showing
compassion and meeting in the middle,” Mortensen said. “It seems so
difficult for people to do, more and more, so I think it’s very
subversive in that sense.”

The Cut is the last in what the director calls his Love, Death and the
Devil trilogy and focuses on the plight of Armenians who are uprooted
from their villages and sent on death marches into the desert,
conscripted into forced labour gangs or killed outright.

The main figure is Nazaret Manoogian, played by Tahar Rahim, an
Armenian blacksmith who is separated from his wife and young twin
daughters in the middle of the night by Turkish soldiers, who take him
to a work camp, after which his town is cleared of Armenians.

He survives the forced labour in the desert and avoids having his
throat slit when his would-be executioner takes pity and only pretends
to kill him.

After Turkey’s defeat in the war, he begins a quest that takes him to
Cuba and the US in search of his missing daughters who have fled
there, after their mother and the rest of their family were killed.

Nazaret ends up in North Dakota working on a railroad construction
crew and is brutally beaten with a shovel when he intervenes to stop
one of the workers raping a native American woman. Her plight recalls
the rape of an Armenian woman by Turks that Nazaret saw in Turkey but
could do nothing to stop.

“I had to create an empathy, an empathy for the hero, an empathy for
the story,” Akin said.

“One trick I used was I took the genocide on the native Americans and
used it just as a snap of an idea, you know, so that even people who
deny the fact of the genocide to the Armenians can identify themselves
with the hero in that moment, to reflect about it later.”

Le Monde compares Aliyev regime with ISIL

20:03, 2 September, 2014

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS: Le Monde periodical compared the
regime of Ilham Aliyev with ISIL(Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant). Armenpress reports about it, citing the article, published in
the French newspaper Le Monde titled “Ilham Aliyev’s regime should be
stopped in Azerbaijan”.

The authors of the article compared the case of the Armenian Karen
Petrosyan killed by Azerbaijanis, the beheading of the American
journalist James Foley by the ILIS and another murder committed
several days before that, the victim of which was dressed in a
soldier’s uniform (when taken captive, he was wearing jeans and
sneakers) to represent him as a rival’s special service agent.

“The regime of Ilham Aliyev is one of the most repressive regimes of
our planet. It is periodically mentioned by international
organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and
Reporters sans Frontières. It is of a great threat to its own
citizens, even for ethnic Azeris, the evidence of which is the illegal
arrests of Leila and Arif Yunus and Rasuf Jafarov. In these conditions
it is not difficult to imagine what destiny would have the Armenians
of the Nagorno Karabakh, who have already tasted the germs of that
destiny back in 1990, when the pogroms, organized by the Azerbaijani
regime, gave birth to the establishment of an independent state of
Armenians”, – says the

periodical. (THE FULL VERSION OF THE ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN ARMENIAN)

Eurasian Union to open new prospects for Armenian market – MP

12:53 * 02.09.14

A lawmaker of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia on Tuesday
elaborated on the economic advantages of Armenia’s Eurasian
integration.

Gagik Minasyan, who heads the National Assembly’s Standing Committee
on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs, said he expects the
exemption of customs duties to be Armenia’s major gain after joining
the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). He noted further that new sanitary
norms and the market opening to the country (promising delays in VAT
payments) are likely to raise the economic advantages in future.

The parliamentarian said he believes that the Western sanctions
against Russia have changed the Armenian society’s understanding of
the Russian market over the past period. “New opportunities emerge for
us in terms of exporting and realizing goods. As to what extent we
will manage to us those opportunities, it depends on the flexibility
of our entrepreneurs,” he added.

Commenting on Kazakh President Norsultan Nazarbaev’s statement that
his country may decide against continuing the EEU membership process,
Minasyan said he thinks that the move is extremely important in terms
of realizing that the union is really an economic one. “Those states
pursue approaches conflicting with one another,” he said, addressing
the economic interests of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the founding
member states of the economic bloc.

Minasyan noted that despite several Western powers’ earlier calls on
Armenia to decide between the Eurasian or European integration
processes, the Foreign Ministry stated later that it would continue
the partnership with the European Union.

Armenian News – Tert.am

La Jornada (Bolivia)
1 sep 2014

El genocidio armenio y la guerra argelina: la sangre brota en la Mostra

Venecia (Italia), (EFE)
lunes 1, septiembre 2014

Una ambiciosa producción para una enorme historia. Si hasta ahora
Fatih Akin había conquistado a crítica y jurado de los grandes
festivales con sus pequeños retratos de la inmigración turca, en “The
Cut” el director tira la casa por la ventana para denunciar el
olvidado genocidio armenio (1915-1923).

La épica de “The Cut” contrasta con la delicadeza de “Loin des
hommes”, la otra cinta en competición del día en la Mostra. Y eso que
también habla de guerras, en este caso la argelina (1954-1962), bajo
la dirección de David Oelhoffen, el protagonismo de Viggo Mortensen y
la inspiración de Albert Camus.

Ganador del Oso de Oro en Berlín en 2004 por “Head on”, Akin ha
contado esta vez con un coguionista de lujo, el veterano Mardik Martin
(“Raging Bull”, “Mean Streets”) que ayer en Venecia recordaba aquella
fatídica frase de Adolf Hitler: “¿Quién, después de todo, se acuerda
hoy del genocidio armenio?”.

El cine no ha sido ajeno a ese olvido pese a contadas excepciones como
“Ararat”, de Atom Egoyan.

“The Cut”, rodada en inglés, centra el foco en un personaje, un padre
superviviente de las matanzas cometidas por los soldados turcos
durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, que se embarca en una auténtica
odisea transatlántica -Turquía, Siria, Líbano, Cuba, EEUU- para volver
a reunirse con sus hijas.

Tahar Ramin, conocido por su papel en “Un prophète”, pasa con nota el
reto de poner rostro y emoción a un hombre que a consecuencia de las
hostilidades se ha quedado sin voz.

Pese a la polémica que ha suscitado la película en los sectores
ultranacionalistas turcos, Akin ha asegurado que su objetivo es
llegar, sobre todo, al público en Turquía. “Quería que incluso la
gente que sigue negando el genocidio pudiera identificarse con el
héroe”.

Quizá eso explique cierta simplificación y pérdida de sutileza con
respecto a su trabajo previo. Aun así, la historia emociona y contiene
también una crítica al dogmatismo religioso.

“Al principio el protagonista es un creyente estricto, pero debido a
la tragedia que le sacude, va perdiendo su fe, para finalmente
redescubrir la esperanza”, ha explicado el director. “La idea es que
hay que liberarse dogmas para llegar a la esencia de la
espiritualidad”.

Premiado en 2004 en Cannes por el guión de “Al otro lado” y en 2009 en
Venecia por la comedia “Soul Kitchen”, Akin se ha tomado siete años
para concluir esta cinta que cierra su trilogía de “amor, muerte y
maldad”.

Un tiempo que le ha servido para investigar, para escribir y
reescribir, y para viajar personalmente a todos los países por los que
pasa el personaje.

En el caso de “Loin des hommes”, la historia se centra en Argelia
durante la rebelión independentista. Un maestro de escuela (Mortensen)
se ve obligado a trasladar a un prisionero (Reda Kateb) de un pueblo a
otro en pleno invierno en las montañas del Atlas.

“Hemos querido respetar la idea básica del relato de Camus (“El
invitado”), sobre lo difícil que es mantener un posicionamiento
político e ideológico en un contexto de guerra”, ha explicado
Oelhoffen.

“No hay ningún deseo de crear polémica”, ha añadido. “No se trata de
juzgar el colonialismo ni la guerra de Argelia”.

Viggo Mortensen, también coproductor, ha citado una frase de los
diarios de Camus que le sirvió de inspiración para su personaje: “No
estoy hecho para la política porque soy incapaz de desear o aceptar la
muerte de mi adversario”.

El actor se preparó a conciencia previamente al rodaje. No sólo
leyendo “casi todo” de Camus, sino viajando por los pueblos de
Argelia. “Me gusta observar a la gente, sin juzgar, cualquier cosa
puede ser útil para el personaje”, dijo.

Con una pequeña aparición de Angela Molina, “Loin des hommes” cuenta
con una banda sonora de textura electrónica y ambiental compuesta por
Nick Cave y Warren Ellis.

Assyrian International News Agency AINA
Sept 1 2014

World ‘Cannot Keep Silent About the Existence of the So-called ISIS,’
Patriarchs Declare

Posted 2014-09-01 22:37 GMT

Meeting at the Maronite Catholic patriarchate at Bkerke, north of
Beirut, Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs convened for a special summit
to address the crisis in Iraq and Syria. Later joined by the United
Nations’ special coordinator in Lebanon and the ambassadors of the
five permanent member-countries of the U.N. Security Council, the
patriarchs called for worldwide efforts to eradicate terrorist groups.

All denounced attacks on Christians and called for greater
international involvement.

“The very existence of Christians is at stake in several Arab
countries – notably in Iraq, Syria and Egypt – where they have been
exposed to heinous crimes, forcing them to flee,” the patriarchs said
in a statement.

They highlighted the indifference of both Islamic authorities and the
international community over attacks against Christians, who have been
in the region for 2,000 years.

“What is painful is the absence of a stance by Islamic authorities,
and the international community has not adopted a strict stance
either,” the patriarchs said.

“We call for issuing a fatwa that forbids attacks against others,” they said.

“The international community cannot keep silent about the existence of
the so-called ISIS,” the patriarchs said, referring to the Islamic
State. “They should put an end to all extremist terrorist groups and
criminalize aggression against Christians and their properties.”

The meeting was a follow-up to their first summit earlier this month,
in addition to a trip by several of them to Irbil, the capital of
Iraq’s Kurdish region.

The prelates stressed the need for cutting off the sources of
terrorism. They called upon the nations of the world to deprive
extremist groups of resources by compelling countries financing them
to stop their support.

Solutions, they say must include “dealing with the reasons that
produced the miseries in the Middle East.” Harmony must be restored
between the components of these countries, they said.

“The international community must act and eradicate” the Islamic
State, the patriarchs said. “This is required from the United Nations
and the U.N. Security Council.

“We must stop using extremists, terrorists and mercenaries and (stop)
supporting, financing and arming them,” they said.

The summit, presided by Cardinal Bechara Rai, Maronite patriarch, and
was attended by: Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II;
Armenian Catholic Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni; Melkite
Catholic Patriarch Gregoire III Laham; Syriac Catholic Patriarch
Ignace Joseph III Younan; Catholicos Aram of Cilicia, patriarch of the
Armenian Apostolic Church; Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako; a
representative of the Greek Orthodox Church; and the head of the
Evangelical Council, Rev. Salim Sahyouni.

False Friend, Tiresome Threats

Arpiar Petrossian, Tehran, 30 August 2014

The below article was submitted to Keghart.com by Arpiar Petrossian as
comment (Caviar Diplomacy vs. Dedication). Because of its
comprehensive look at a disturbing phenomenon, we’ve decided to
publish it as an article.–Editor.

You are so right! Especially about the politicians’ difference of view
with that of boy scouts.

Hardly would anyone doubt it. Yet for a whole century (99.25 years,to
be precise) we have kept preaching the politicians on our rightfulness
and the answer -if any – has been: “Yes of course, my dear; but after
all, the Turks are our allies; Turkey is the only steady regime in
Near/Middle East [usually: ‘a sea of turmoil’], a west leaning secular
democracy among Islamist dictatorships and a major trade partner of
the west, especially of the U.S. Do you expect us to offend and
alienate them?”

The whole argument is another misinformation provided by Turkish (and
lately Azeri) lobbies – not to politicians, mind you, (they are
usually convinced through more persuasive means) but to the general
public who stomach it as a justification. While keeping up our
informative campaign on both the Genocide and Gharabagh, we should
underline the fact that neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan is much of a
prize for the west; they are more of a burden.

Let us have a look at the major points of the arguments usually put forward:

Ally of the west (?):

Turkey is the only NATO member in open and manifest enmity with
another member. It hopes to become an EU member while occupying half
of another member’s land. Its foreign policy has not always been in
line with the interest of the west, as demonstrated by Mr. Erdogan’s
lexicon reserved for Israel. Yes, there are some (rented) American
military bases in Turkey. But then, Guantanamo does not make Cuba an
American ally. Azerbaijan – despite its caviar diplomacy – buys its
armament from Russia.

A steady regime (?):

Since 1960 there have been four military coups in Turkey, plus a civil
war that lasted from 1978 to (the cease fire in) 2013. Of course the
government calls it “pacification acts against terrorists”! Azerbaijan
also had its share of military coups: one that brought the Aliev
dynasty to power in 1993 and two that failed to topple it.

Secular (?):

Turkey started out as an Islamic Caliphate. After Ataturk got things
his way in 1922, it became an anti religious (especially anti Islamic)
state, as a means of modernization. “Anti” not in the sense of being
basically against, more as a prefix, like anti-pope, anti-hero,
anti-matter etc. meaning “of the same nature though in the opposite
direction”. Now it is fast becoming an anti-anti-religious place,
where the president says publicly that women should not laugh in
public and where there are plans for building mosques on land
confiscated from Armenians – like the days of Ottoman caliphs. Despite
caviar’s dubious status at being halal (sturgeons, you know, have no
scales), Azerbaijan has been a proud member of OIC since its
independence.

Democracy (?):

Up to 1950 Turkey was officially a one party system. afterwards, each
of the four military coups were followed by a period (1.5-3 years) of
military rule. Even under “civilian” rule, the military has been
bombing their own villages. Just a few months ago when scandal broke
out about Erdogan’s financial activities, quite a number of judges and
prosecution authorities were summarily arrested and fired. Later
Erdogan was elected president, in elections judged by OSCE as not all
that transparent and fair. Only one of Azerbaijan’s presidents,
Ilcibey, is sometimes referred to as “democratically elected”.

Major trade partner (?):

It’s supposed to be an irresistibly convincing argument. Neither
Turkey nor Azerbaijan is included in Wikipedia’s list of 16 major
trade partners of the US. Nor are they mentioned among the 58 whose
topmost partner is the US. They are not included in Canada’s top 10
partners. Turkey ranks 16th at trade with Germany. Neither are
anywhere to be seen as importers of Australian goods and services and
Turkey is only 22nd as an exporter to Australia. EU is somewhat
different: Turkey ranks 6th among its customers, but with a balance of
only 25 billion Euros for 28 nations. The list can go on and on. In
short, it indicates that Turkey and Azerbaijan desperately need the
west whereas the west can well do without them (caviar and all).

Alienation(?):

This is a blackmail Turkey has often used – especially since the cold
war: “If you do this or that, especially if you recognize the Genocide
or befriend the Armenians, you won’t be seeing anymore of me; and
then… woe and shudder!” This has been repeated so much and so often –
both by Turks and their beneficiaries — that everyone, even many
Armenians, believe they mean business. In actual fact it is a bluff.
Experience shows there is a clear cut and repeating pattern: first the
ambassador is summoned to Ankara and the Turkish government makes all
kinds of noise, at the top of their lungs. Then, in about no time at
all, they are back–hat in hand. Then they(and their younger brothers)
start spending huge amounts on their Armenophobic lobby (good for the
host!). Just look at Argentina, Canada, France, you name it. And let
us not forget that the majority of EU members recognize the Genocide,
yet Turkey is trying so hard to join it.

Won’t somebody, please, tell these to Americans and those nations that
are wary of hurting the Turks’ feelings?

Armenia’s foreign trade grows to about $3, 289.5 million in January-July

YEREVAN, September 1. /ARKA/. Armenia’s foreign trade turnover grew
3.5% in Jan-July 2014, compared with the same period a year before, to
$3,289.5 million, the National Statistical Service reports.

According to the statistical report, the country’s exports totaled
$847.5 million in Jan-July 2014 showing 2.8% year-on-year growth, and
imports hiked by 3.7% to about $2,442 million. As a result, the
foreign trade adverse balance amounted to $1,594.5 million.

Negative balance in FOB prices amounted to $1,218.5 million in
January-July. (FOB or Free On Board is a trade term requiring the
seller to deliver goods on board a vessel designated by the buyer. The
seller fulfills its obligations to deliver when the goods have passed
over the ship’s rail.)

According to the statistical report, the most substantial export items
in the period were as follows: mineral products – about $218.2mln
(7.3% reduction against January-July 2013), ready foods – about
$178.8mln (15.1% increase), non precious metals and products – around
$178mln (5.6% reduction), precious and semi-precious stones and
precious metals and jewelry – $136.9mln (28.2% increase).

According to official statistics, the following items prevailed in the
country’s imports in January-July: mineral products – about $461.9mln
(4.6% year-on-year decrease), machinery and equipment – $320.9mln
(11.3% increase), ground vehicles, air transport and water crafts –
$221.6mln (9.3% increase), chemical and related industries – about
$201.1mln (0.1% reduction), ready foods – about $197mln (5.1%
decrease). ($1- AMD 411.23). -0–

Turkish director’s film on Armenian Genocide premieres at Venice Film Festival

14:29 01.09.2014

German-born Turkish director Fatih Akin’s film on the Armenian
Genocide – The Cut – premiered at Venice Film Festival Sunday, Reuters
reports.

Akin acknowledged at a news conference that he’d received hate mail
about the film and even a death threat on Twitter, but said “please
don’t make too much out of that”.

“The film that Fatih made is the film that the Armenians have been
waiting for. Everybody always says,’ When are we making a film, a film
about the Armenian genocide?’,” Simon Abkarian, one of the actors in
the film, said at a press conference.

“It took time. The first generation had to survive, the second
generation had to live and the third generation had to react and claim
what we had to claim, which is the recognition of the genocide, most
of it. And I think that one film is never enough to tell such a story,
we have to make more.”

“The Cut” is the last in what the director calls his “Love, Death and
the Devil” trilogy and focuses on the plight of Armenians who are
uprooted from their villages and sent on death marches into the
desert, conscripted into forced labor gangs or killed outright.

The main figure is Nazaret Manoogian, played by Tahar Rahim, an
Armenian blacksmith who is separated from his wife and young twin
daughters in the middle of the night by Turkish soldiers, who take him
to a work camp, after which his town is cleared of Armenians.

He survives the forced labor in the desert and avoids having his
throat slit when his would-be executioner takes pity and only pretends
to kill him.

After Turkey’s defeat in the war, he begins a quest that takes him to
Cuba and America in search of his missing daughters who have fled
there, after their mother and the rest of their family were killed.

Nazaret ends up in North Dakota working on a railroad construction
crew and is brutally beaten with a shovel when he intervenes to stop
one of the workers raping a native American woman. Her plight recalls
the rape of an Armenian woman by Turks that Nazaret saw in Turkey but
could do nothing to stop.

“I had to create an empathy, an empathy for the hero, an empathy for
the story,” Akin said.

“One trick I used was I took the genocide on the native Americans and
used it just as a snap of an idea, you know, so that even people who
deny the fact of the genocide to the Armenians can identify themselves
with the hero in that moment, to reflect about it later.”

Independence is key chapter of our history, says Karabakh official

13:02 * 01.09.14

Independence marks a key turning point in the history of Artsakh
(Nagorno-Karabakh), as September 2 opened a new chapter in our history, an
official has said, commenting on the agenda of the events set to mark the
23rd anniversary of the country’s independence.

“We should consider this an integral part of the Armeniam statehood instead
of separating Artsakh and the Armenian history. This is an important part
of our common history,” David Babayan, a spokesperson for
Nagorno-Karabakh’s president, told Tert.am.

The Declaration on Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence was adopted on September
2, 1991 in a joint session attended by parliamentarians and members of the
regional council of Shahumyan. In a referendum on December 10, the
population of the then autonomous region voted overwhelmingly for
independence (99%).

Asked to comment on the developments over the past period, Babayan said
they managed to proclaim the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, investing long and
painstaking efforts in state-building activities.

“Having been an autonomous region for 70 years [in the Soviet period], we
are now embarking on a period that implies a higher degree [of freedom].
And we have created a new state which has, of course, brought new
challenges, new problems, and opportunities. Those 70 years were years of
struggle, as our nation accumulated a very powerful potential and developed
a kind of immune system to all sorts of difficulties,” Babayan added.

He said the Armenians’ joint efforts helped overcome the challenges to the
entire nation in the face of Azerbaijan’s blatant threats to destroy
Artsakh and Armenia. “Azerbaijan’s calculations fell flat, and we, the two
Armenian states, are integrated and full of hope for the future today,” he
added.

Commenting on the California Senate’s decision to recognize Artsakh,
Babayan described it as their latest achievement that became a kind of gift
for all Armenians in the run-up to the independence anniversary. He said
the move was a really significant landmark, noting that California is a big
and powerful state with a powerful economy.

“It is due to joint efforts – by Armenia, the Diaspora and Artsakh. It is
also the valuation of the past path, as no one is likely to recognize a
fascist and extremist state. Hence what California – I mean the civilized
world – has said is that Artsakh is a democratic and civilized state. That
is why we earned California’s recognition,” he noted.

Babayan said they are now preparing for the holiday, adding that a special
commission has been set up to deal with organizational issues. “Though this
is not Á jubilee – as the anniversary is the twenty-third – there will be
the traditional events. The president will host honoring ceremonies; we
will conduct visits to different places and lay flowers on the monument of
freedom-fighters [veterans of the Artsakh liberation war]. There will also
be a festive concert and a display of fireworks,” he added.

cinéma-Italie-festival-Mostra
Mostra : Algérie et Arménie, deux tragédies en résonance avec le fracas du monde

Venise, 31 août 2014 (AFP) – La guerre d’Algérie et le génocide
arménien sont au coeur de deux films touchants et réalistes, entrés en
compétition dimanche à la Mostra de Venise, et qui sont étrangement en
résonance avec le fracas du monde actuel.

“Loin des hommes”, deuxième long-métrage du Français David Oelhoffen,
est l’un des films les plus attendus de la Mostra, et pas seulement
pour la présence à l’écran du charismatique Viggo Mortensen, à la
célébrité planétaire depuis son rôle d’Aragorn dans le “Seigneur des
Anneaux”.

Le film, qui s’inspire de la nouvelle d’Albert Camus “L’hôte”, issu du
recueil “L’exil et le royaume”, se déroule dans les montagnes de
l’Atlas en 1954, au début de ce qui deviendra la guerre d’Algérie.

La rébellion grondant dans la vallée, deux hommes, que tout oppose,
sont contraints de fuir à travers les crêtes du massif algérien.

Le premier, Daru (Viggo Mortensen), est un instituteur venu d’Espagne,
qui parle français et arabe, et qui apprend le français à des enfants
algériens. Le second, Mohamed (Reda Kateb), est un villageois accusé
de meurtre.

Leur destin bascule quand Daru est chargé d’escorter Mohamed jusqu’au
village voisin pour y être jugé et à coup sûr exécuté. Poursuivis par
des cavaliers algériens réclamant vengeance et par des colons français
revanchards, les deux hommes se révoltent.

“Le texte de Camus est très court et d’une beauté extraordinaire. Il y
a un désert, un prisonnier, quelqu’un qui doit escorter un prisonnier.
Il parle aussi de l’engagement politique et de la difficulté d’y voir
clair dans un monde où la violence éclate et emporte tout”, a expliqué
David Oelhoffen en conférence de presse.

De fait, la violence est partout dans ce film, et dans les deux camps.

L’armée française en prend pour son grade, notamment dans une scène
qui montre des Algériens se faire tuer par des soldats français alors
même qu’ils se rendent. “C’est un crime de guerre”, leur dit Daru.

Cela peut-il raviver certaines plaies de part et d’autre de la
Méditerranée ? “Il n’y a pas de volonté de controverse et si c’était
le cas, ce serait bien malgré moi”, s’est défendu le réalisateur.
“C’est facile, 60 ans plus tard, de juger la colonisation, qui est une
impasse historique. Il se trouve que dans cette région de l’Atlas, en
1954, l’armée française a abattu une cinquantaine d’Algériens, c’est
un fait historique. Il faut montrer les choses comme elles se sont
passées”, a-t-il ajouté.

– “Les Arméniens l’attendaient” –

Autre film, autre période, mais thématique similaire. “The Cut”, signé
Fatih Akin, est le troisième volet d’une trilogie “l’amour, la mort et
le diable” du réalisateur allemand d’origine turque. Il nous plonge
cette fois en 1915, en plein génocide arménien.

Une nuit, le jeune Nazareth Manoogian est enlevé à sa famille par des
gendarmes turcs. Après avoir survécu à l’horreur du génocide des
années plus tard, il apprend que ses deux filles jumelles sont
vivantes.

Il décide de partir à leur recherche et rencontre pendant son périple
des personnes diverses, bienveillantes ou maléfiques.

Tahar Rahim, César du meilleur acteur en 2010 pour “Un Prophète” de
Jacques Audiard, incarne ce père qui ne capitule jamais. Sa prestation
a été particulièrement remarquée sur le Lido, le plaçant parmi les
favoris pour une place au palmarès de la Mostra qui sera révélé
samedi.

“C’est le film que les Arméniens attendaient. Cela a pris du temps, la
première génération a dû survivre, la deuxième a dû vivre et la
troisième réagir et clamer ce qu’elle devait clamer”, a déclaré
l’acteur français d’origine arménienne Simon Abkarian, qui figure au
générique.

“Je pense qu’un seul film est insuffisant pour raconter une telle
histoire. Le gouvernement turc est toujours très conscient de ce qui
se dit au cinéma sur la question arménienne et il y a des lobbies
turcs qui savent intervenir quand il le faut”, a-t-il affirmé face aux
journalistes.

Par Franck IOVENE

AFP

lundi 1er septembre 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com