Days of Glory, a 2006 French war film released under its original title Indigènes, follows North African soldiers who enlisted to liberate France from Nazi occupation. The Cannes Film Festival awarded its collective Best Actor prize to the film’s ensemble cast in May 2006. And within days of the French release in late September, President Jacques Chirac reversed a pension disparity that had stood since Charles de Gaulle’s 1959 order.
Days of Glory joins a long line of European war films that critics have re-evaluated decades later, from Battle of Britain as another forgotten war-cinema masterpiece to why Bridge on the River Kwai still divides viewers.
What the Film Argues France Forgot
Days of Glory opens with a credit card that places its four central characters inside the Free French First Army in 1943, men pulled from the Atlas Mountains, the Algerian hinterland and Moroccan towns most of them had never left. Bouchareb’s film follows Said, a poor goat herder, Messaoud, who dreams of marrying a French woman and settling in France, Corporal Abdelkader, who wants formal equality for indigenous soldiers, and Yassir, who fights so his brother Larbi can afford a bride. Almost 1 million soldiers from across France’s colonial empire served in the French Army during the 20th century, the Christian Science Monitor reported, and an estimated 100,000 of them lost their lives. What Days of Glory argues is that the official history has rarely reckoned with their share of the victory.
The film’s closing title card states that in 1959, the year de Gaulle granted independence to France’s African colonies, the pensions of those colonial veterans were frozen at the level they received that year. Successive French administrations kept that freeze in place through 2002, the film’s credits note, even though a French court had ruled that the pensions should be paid in full. Days of Glory does not pretend the case was settled: a final on-screen line states that, as of 2010, no war pension arrears of almost 40 years had been considered.
A Cannes Best Actor Win That Went to Five Men Together
At the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, an unusual thing happened: the festival awarded its Best Actor prize not to one performer but to the film’s entire principal cast. Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila and Bernard Blancan shared the Prix d’interprétation masculine, with the festival noting the collective force of their work as indigenous soldiers in Bouchareb’s platoon. It remains one of the rare occasions the Cannes jury has split its lead-performance award across five names at once. The film also took the festival’s François Chalais Prize that year.
The ensemble blends actors from across the Maghreb and France. Debbouze plays Said, the goat herder; Naceri takes Yassir; Zem plays Messaoud, the soldier courting a Frenchwoman; Bouajila plays Corporal Abdelkader; Blancan plays Sergeant Roger Martinez, a pied-noir whose own family secret ties him to the men he commands. Mélanie Laurent plays Margueritte, a village woman in the Vosges.
The shared Cannes award is the headline, but it sits inside a longer record. Days of Glory was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars, where it lost to The Lives of Others. The film was a France-Morocco-Belgium-Algeria co-production that ran 123 minutes in its final cut and carried a budget of $14.5 million. It went on to gross $22.5 million at the box office. Its co-production partnership brought together Mars Distribution in France and Belga Films in Belgium as the principal distributors.
The cast’s shared Cannes win also gave the picture a political weight that followed it off the Croisette. Chirac and his wife Bernadette attended a private screening in the weeks before the film’s wide French release, and French media reported the couple were moved enough by what they saw to act.
- 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, from 86 reviews
- 82 out of 100 on Metacritic, a band the site labels ‘universal acclaim’
- 7.0 on IMDb from roughly 16,000 user ratings
- Cannes Best Actor (collective), May 2006
- Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, 2007
- $22.5 million global box office on a $14.5 million budget
Inside the Story: From the Atlas Mountains to Alsace
The men train in lend-lease American uniforms under a battle-hardened pied-noir sergeant, then deploy to Italy, where their French commanding officers use them as cannon fodder to identify artillery targets. A French colonel tells a war correspondent that ‘today was a great victory for the Free French Forces’ as the colonial troops take the worst of the casualties. The film’s structure sets small, daily slights alongside the larger combat scenes.
The regiment is then embarked for Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France. When a French cook refuses to serve tomatoes to the indigenous soldiers, a mutiny is narrowly averted. Arriving in Marseille, the colonial troops are greeted as heroes, and Messaoud meets and courts a French woman named Irène, promising to write and return. The colonial troops are then denied the leave that other Free French units receive, herded into billets and given a ballet performance for entertainment.
The film’s final act sends the survivors into Alsace on a special ammunition mission ordered by the French colonel as a reward for past service. Most of the men are killed by a German booby trap, and the survivors rally under Abdelkader to retake an Alsatian village from German troops before the story flashes forward to an elderly Abdelkader visiting the graves of his comrades in an Alsatian war cemetery. A French staff officer asks Abdelkader where his unit is; when he says they are all dead, the officer reassigns him to another French NCO and moves on.
The Pension Reversal Chirac Made After Watching It
Within days of the French release of Days of Glory in late September 2006, President Jacques Chirac announced that pensions for veterans of France’s former colonies would be brought into line with those of French peers. The decree, set to take effect the following January, covered about 80,000 people from some 23 countries and was estimated to cost France around $140 million a year. The timing was not coincidence. French media reported that Chirac and his wife Bernadette had been moved by a private screening of the film in the weeks before the announcement.
The disparity Chirac’s decree addressed had stood for almost half a century. President Charles de Gaulle had frozen the war pensions of overseas soldiers at the level they received the year France granted independence to its African colonies. The result, by 2006, was a monthly gap that a 2006 dispatch on France’s colonial veteran pensions documented in stark terms: an invalid French veteran received €690, while his Senegalese counterpart received €230, less than a third. Issa Cisse, an 85-year-old Senegalese veteran of the 1944 Provence landings, told the Monitor that he had been fighting for parity for years and was skeptical that the new promise would bring the back payments he said his community was owed. The same Monitor piece reminded readers of the December 1944 Thiaroye massacre outside Dakar, in which French troops fired on sleeping Senegalese veterans demanding the compensation they had been promised, a story Days of Glory does not dramatise but which sits in the same ledger.
Chirac framed his decree in the language of debt. His office issued the statement the same week the film opened in France.
It is a question of solidarity, justice, and recognition. We owe it to these men who have paid with their blood.
The statement came from President Jacques Chirac, in his role as President of France, and was issued the same week Days of Glory opened in French cinemas. The new measure was set to take effect the following January. Successive French administrations had failed to honour earlier court rulings that the pensions should be paid in full.
Days of Glory did not end the argument. The film’s own closing credits state that successive French administrations since 2002 had failed to honour earlier court rulings that the pensions be paid in full, and that as of 2010 no arrears for almost 40 years had been considered.
- 1943: North African soldiers are recruited into the Free French First Army for the campaigns in Italy and France.
- 1944: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais land in Provence in August, part of the Allied advance through southern France.
- 1959: Pensions of colonial veterans are frozen when France grants independence to its African colonies.
- 2002: A French court rules that the pensions should be paid in full, but successive administrations do not act.
- September 2006: Days of Glory opens in France; Chirac announces the pension equalisation weeks later.
- January 2007: The new pension regime is set to take effect.
What the Aggregators and Critics Said
The numbers attached to Days of Glory are unusually strong for a French-language war film. Rotten Tomatoes logged an 83 percent approval rating from 86 critics, with a critical consensus that called it ‘a powerful historical epic that pays homage to a valiant group of soldiers whose sacrifices have largely been forgotten’. Metacritic, the other major aggregator, scored it 82 out of 100 from 25 critics, a band the site labels ‘universal acclaim’. The film also cleared 7.0 on IMDb from roughly 16,000 user ratings, and that figure has held remarkably steady since the film’s wider English-language release.
Critics who reviewed Days of Glory in 2006 and 2007 focused on the same dissonance Bouchareb’s story makes of French Republican ideals. Kenneth Turan reviewed the film for the Los Angeles Times in December 2006 under the headline ‘Outsiders’ WWII from the inside’. Reporting from Dakar by the Christian Science Monitor in 2006 described veteran Issa Cisse as skeptical that Chirac’s new promise would bring the back payments he said his community was owed. The film’s most persistent theme across reviews was the gap between the Free French slogan of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and the unequal treatment the colonial troops actually received. Critics also returned repeatedly to the closing title card, which states that as of 2010 no arrears for almost 40 years had been considered.
User reviews on IMDb run along similar lines. The page carries a 7.0 average from roughly 16,000 ratings, with one prominent review calling Indigènes ‘an excellent film with strong performances and a strong, political core’. One criticism is the film’s foreign-language dialogue, which a reviewer blamed for limiting the audience the picture’s politics deserve. The film’s reach in the English-language market has stayed close to its French and Francophone base, where the original Indigènes title remains in use.
The Oscar Run and the Lingering Gaps
Days of Glory’s Oscar nomination widened the picture’s reach beyond its French release. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 ceremony but lost to The Lives of Others. The nomination put the picture in front of an American audience it would not otherwise have reached.
The pension story did not end with Chirac’s 2006 announcement. The film’s own closing credits state that successive French administrations since 2002 had failed to honour earlier court rulings that the pensions be paid in full, and that as of 2010 no arrears for almost 40 years had been considered. A 2009 BBC investigation later documented that black colonial soldiers had been deliberately removed from the units leading the Allied advance into Paris in 1944. The disclosure added another documented case to the same history the film records.
Days of Glory is a film built on a question France is still answering. Two decades after its release, the picture’s record of how the country treated the men who fought for it has lost none of its charge.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Days of Glory about?
Days of Glory follows four North African soldiers who join the Free French Forces in 1943 to fight Nazi Germany and help liberate France. The film traces them from training in Morocco through the Italian campaign, the invasion of southern France and a final, costly mission in Alsace. It centres on the discrimination the indigenous troops face from the same army they have volunteered to serve.
Who directed Days of Glory?
Days of Glory was directed by Rachid Bouchareb, an Algerian-French filmmaker. Bouchareb co-wrote the screenplay with Olivier Lorelle and produced the film through Jean Bréhat, with Jacques-Henri Bronckart as a co-producer. The picture was a France-Morocco-Belgium-Algeria co-production, distributed in France by Mars Distribution. Its original French title is Indigènes, which translates as ‘Natives’.
Did Days of Glory win the Oscar?
Days of Glory did not win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was nominated at the 2007 ceremony but lost to The Lives of Others. The nomination gave the picture a wider American audience than its French release had reached. Days of Glory did win the collective Best Actor prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and the festival’s François Chalais Prize. The film went on to gross $22.5 million worldwide against a $14.5 million budget.
Why did Chirac change the pension law?
Chirac announced the pension equalisation in late September 2006, the same week Days of Glory opened in French cinemas. French media reported that the president and his wife Bernadette had attended a private screening in the weeks before the announcement. The new measure was set to take effect the following January and to cover about 80,000 veterans from some 23 countries.
What is the French title of Days of Glory?
The film’s original French title is Indigènes, which translates literally as ‘Natives’. The Arabic title printed on the film’s poster is بلديون, romanised as Baladiyyūn. The English-language title Days of Glory was used for the film’s international release. The title refers to the French army’s term for soldiers recruited from its North African colonies. The film carries a French colonial-era label its characters would have worn themselves in 1943.
Is Days of Glory historically accurate?
Days of Glory dramatises a real history: soldiers from France’s North African and sub-Saharan African colonies served in the Free French Forces during the Second World War. The Christian Science Monitor reported that close to a million soldiers from France’s colonial empire served in the French Army across the 20th century, with an estimated 100,000 losing their lives. The film’s plot draws on documented discrimination in pay, leave, rations and recognition within the French Army of the period. The pension freeze it depicts at the close was a real policy, instituted in the year France granted independence to its African colonies and partially reversed in 2006.
