The films of French-Jewish filmmaker, Alexandre Arcady, will be the subject of a tribute at the 25th Jerusalem Jewish Film Week, which runs through December 14 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. Arcady, who will be attending, said he feels that this is an especially important moment to highlight movies of Jewish interest.
Arcady’s newest movie, Once Upon a Time in Algeria (its French title is Le Petit Blond de la Casbah), will have its Israeli premiere at the festival. The movie is a semi-autobiographical look at his family’s roots in Algeria. Diane Kurys, also a French-Jewish filmmaker, is one of the film’s producers.
Arcady’s 1991 film, Pour Sacha, will also be shown in the festival and this film, in the Classics section. In these two films as well as in almost all of his work, his Jewish identity is a critical part of the stories he tells.
Asked what it means to him, as a French Jew, to participate in the Jerusalem Jewish Film Week, he said, “Being in Israel at a time when the country is at war against Hamas is for me a mark of solidarity.
In this moment of trial, where hostages are still being held, abjectly, by these bloodthirsty terrorists and where the soldiers fight for freedom and security, not only for the country, but also for the freedoms of Westerners around the world, I am proud to be among you.”
The events of the October 7 massacre came as “a shock!”
“A terrible shock. Impossible to understand. Rage in the heart and tears in the eyes. Israel’s vulnerability left us all devastated and incredulous. How was it possible? And then, the horrible details of this pogrom, down to the murder of the babies. I was in the auditorium for the finishing touches on my film [Once Upon a Time in Algeria] and upon hearing this news, I broke down and cried! In tears, I called my wife to light a candle in memory of these innocent babies. I am still both shocked and revolted by these barbaric acts.”
Many people around the world first got to know Alexandre Arcady through Pour Sacha. It is about the complicated romantic and personal relationships among a group of Parisian students and their charismatic teacher, who have moved to a kibbutz in northern Israel just before the outbreak of the Six-Day War.
It works both as a universal coming-of-age story and also as a very particular story about the history and conflicts of French Jews. It stars Sophie Marceau (who played a Bond girl in The World is Not Enough, as well as dozens of roles in acclaimed French movies) as Laura, a young non-Jewish woman who has fallen for Sacha (Richard Berry), their former teacher.
The inspiration behind the film
The supporting cast includes many well-known French actors, including Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour) and Israeli actors, such as Salim Daw (Avanti Popolo), Ayelet Zurer, and Yael Abecassis.
The film was inspired by his own experiences, he said. “That was the most beautiful period of my life... my adolescence. The idea of Zionism, the idea of living on a kibbutz excited us. In the youth movement that I attended, we experienced moments of exaltation.
So I made my dream come true and I lived two years in a kibbutz – Yehi’am – and it was where I celebrated my 20th birthday. It was an incredible experience and was intensified by the outbreak of the Six-Day War. I was just 20 years old and I was going through my second war, the first one was for the independence of Algeria, and then this one, which would completely change the perception of the State of Israel.
“So, naturally, I wanted to make a film about this period. ‘Turning 20, like the State of Israel!’ said Sophie Marceau, joyfully, to Sacha, in the film. This feature film played an important role, in France, in the country’s vision of that time.”
His latest film, Once Upon a Time in Algeria, is also inspired by his life. It has the framing device of showing Antoine (Patrick Mille), an established filmmaker, now living in France, taking his son back to Algiers to show him what his childhood there was like, and then moves into flashbacks of his early life. It opens with a very effective sequence in which the young Antoine (Leo Campion) goes to a movie at a cinema club with Josette (Iman Perez), the slightly older friend he is in love with.
As they watch the opening few moments of Rene Clement’s classic, Forbidden Games (1952), perhaps the most affecting movie ever about the consequences of war on children, they hear an explosion in the street. Josette leaves the theater to investigate, while Antoine can’t stop watching the movie, and when she returns she tells him a car bomb was detonated in the street, wounding and killing many. “I prefer films to life!” he tells Josette, and he is on his way to becoming a filmmaker from that moment.
As he visits his birthplace as an adult, he meets Josette (Valerie Kaprisky) and tells her, “By making my film, I thought that I wanted to bring a past world back to life. But the truth is that I wanted to understand where I come from. Who I really am!” and he admits he hasn’t figured it out at all, although, in the end, the visit does bring him closure. The movie shows how Algerian Jews found themselves caught up in a conflict that made them vulnerable, and how their lives there were filled with joy as well as pain.
Arcady said that he actually did see Forbidden Games in Algiers, just as it is depicted in the movie.
“From that day on, I have the precise memory that my life had changed... The fiction, the big screen, the actors, the settings, the story had entered my existence with a bang. In Algiers, I lived in a traditional family where the practice of Judaism was good and peaceful. We shared our building with those from other communities; we shared all our celebrations, with respect and fraternity. It’s this atmosphere that accompanied my childhood and adolescence,” he said.
Returning to Algeria to make the film brought up many emotions, he said. “It was while making this film, I became aware that the Jewish community in Algeria had disappeared, erased from memories, yet its presence was 2,000 years old in the Maghreb. Knowledge was one thing, actually filming there caused a real shock.”
In spite of the rise of antisemitism, Arcady still thinks that French Jews have an important contribution to make to the arts.
“French Judaism has always been present in the arts, literature, music, varieties, theater, or cinema. Sometimes with its Jewish particularism, but most often in its universality. Today, with the rise of incredible antisemitism in France, we cannot still measure its negative impact on artists. What I can tell you, personally, is that the theatrical distribution of my new film, Once Upon a Time in Algeria, was certainly ‘boycotted’ by a large number of independent distributors. And this in view, I am sure, of the war in the Middle East – and such an attitude is utterly scandalous.”
Arcady said he was “delighted” to watch new Israeli television series, which are widely shown in France, and that he wouldn’t rule out working here again: “Making a new film here in Israel would be with joy. I still have to find a beautiful subject to realize this dream.”