Auschwitz seen from the viewpoint of a young, confused German (Am Ende Kommen die Touristen). The Pope’s visit to a Uruguayan village as the driving force of a neorealist tale on a bike (El Baño del Papa). The Rwandan genocide evoked through a maleficent and revengeful friendship (Munyurangabo). The intervention of NATO in Kosovo, backdrop for a Romanian village farce (California Dreamin’). A bomb attack as the turning point in the life of a mother in Madrid (La Soledad). Pure coincidence or the result of an editorial line ? In any case, the selection of Un Certain Regard strongly questions, much more than the other Cannes selections, the nature of the links between the History and individual stories. Being extremely diverse in style and approach, these films are vehicles for very different readings and visions of History, sometimes chaotic, sometimes determinist, sometimes cyclic.

Allowing a more or less narrow margin of freedom for their main protagonists. As much as they may be jerked around by history, personal stories will always have their place in cinema. For directors, confronting history inevitably means a series of questions : How to approach a historical event using the tool of fiction ? How to portray the fate of so many through individual stories ? What are the risks involved in revisiting a more or less recent past ? All of these questions are clearly interesting.

These films, each in their own way, are necessary. At a time when French cinema is not only depoliticising, but tending to empty its stories of any historical substance, these new films coming from the four corners of the globe show the way forward - in order to prevent Indigènes from becoming the tree which hides the desert.

Matthieu Darras