If the streaming platforms were not excluded from the Cannes Film Festival by the organizers, two fictions around the Oussekine affair – named after the student killed by police in Paris on the night of December 5 to 6, 1986 – would have rubbed shoulders on the steps of the Palais des Festivals.
On May 11, Disney+ posted a four-part series retracing the death of Malik Oussekine and the legal battle that followed between his family and the police responsible for his death. This story returns to the screen at the Cannes Film Festival with the feature film Our Brothers by director Rachid Bouchareb, whose filmography (Native, Outlaw) pays tribute to North African immigrants in France and their history.
Presented out of competition on the Croisette, Our Brothers narrates the drama quite similarly to the series Oussekine. Two temporalities intersect on the screen: the night of horror lived by Malik Oussekine and the anger of his relatives the day after the terrible news. Rachid Bouchareb, however, adds an additional narrative arc compared to Disney + fiction. In parallel with the death of Malik, he also recounts the “forgotten” death of Abdel Benyahia. The same night, this young man, also from North African immigration, was shot and killed at point-blank range by an alcoholic police officer staggering in front of a bar.
The most poignant aspect of Our Brothers is the way Rachid Bouchareb films the damage caused by the men of the General Inspectorate of the National Police who are investigating the deaths of the two young people. Faced with the political stakes of these deaths in the midst of student demonstrations against the Devaquet law, named after the Minister of Higher Education at the time who wanted to reform university entry, the police did not not hesitate to lie to the families of the victims to hide the truth of the facts.
Opposite, according to their education, the offspring of immigration revolt or crash. The actor Samir Guesmi, for example, is a formidable interpreter of the father of Abdel Benyahia, who does not dare to ask the police questions about the disappearance of his son for fear of appearing like a “bad” Arab.
The historical fresco painted by Rachid Bouchareb is in line with his previous films, with a focus on the trajectories of characters crushed by society. To tell the story of racism, the director highlights the humanity of those who suffer from discrimination, like this brilliant employee of the morgue in which the bodies of Malik and Abdel are sent. He is a man of African descent who takes care of dead bodies. He is at the very bottom of the social scale and seems invisible to the eyes of the investigators. But, it is nevertheless he who watches over the remains with immense humanity.
Ultimately, Our Brothers deals with the same facts as the series Oussekine by Antoine Chevrollier, but Rachid Bouchareb adds a more radical bias with an additional focus on “forgotten victims”. For a mediatized death, that of Malik Oussekine, the director tells us that there are ten forgotten victims of racism. At the premiere of the film in Cannes, Rachid Bouchareb also pointed out that this film had almost never been made. “I feared that this project would not happen, but I found people as motivated as me to do it”.
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Gender : drama
Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Actors: Reda Kateb, Lais Salameh, Adam Amara, Samit Guesmi, Lyna Khoudri
Country : France
Duration : 1h32
Exit : soon in the cinema
Distributer : The pact
Summary: On the night of December 5 to 6, 1986, Malik Oussekine died following a police intervention, while Paris was rocked by student demonstrations against a new education reform. The Ministry of the Interior is all the more inclined to hush up this affair, as another Frenchman of Algerian origin was killed the same night by a police officer.