Guy FREE MEN is an attempt to add a multi-cultural element to the story of the French Resistance, by focusing on its North African component and (not entirely believably) suggesting it was a precursor to the later resistance struggle by Arabs against the French for Algerian independence. The plot is a classic as a self-interested Arab petty crook in Paris is caught by Vichy cops and forced to infiltrate the Resistance only to discover that their cause is worth fighting for. This allows for lots of cameos by historical figures like Salim Halali (an Arab Jewish singer and homosexual) and Si Kaddour Benghabrit (who ran the Paris mosque and helped Jews escape the Holocaust). Unfortunately the film lets itself down by being so one note; it identifies the Gestapo with the immigration police, ignores the use of North African bounty hunters by the Germans to catch Jews in return for cash, and features only one Arab who is anti-semitic and anti-homosexual...and who is (spoilers) a traitor anyway. Restoring a forgotten history is laudable, but ignoring its negative aspects is not. The film itself is cleanly shot and full of good actors, even if the small budget means that not much happens (which is probably quite realistic) and the script doesn't provide much for the actors to work with.

Sgt_Pepper1102 I ignored IMDb's rating and just watched this hoping it'd be a good film. I was very disappointed. The story seemed interesting and it seemed at first as if it had many undertones and little stories and details—even a certain poetry—, but soon it was all simplified and followed a slow, distant rhythm like some sort of thriller and I started losing interest in the character and his situation.I could say most of the actors were great, especially Michael Lonsdale, but the rest, including Tahar Rahim, carried a considerable emotional weight throughout the movie, but merely on the surface; it didn't create deep connections with other characters or situations, and that's also how most scenes were. I can't help to blame the director and the script for all this. The photography was great and the art direction, as well, even when the color palette is extremely rehashed nowadays, because it wasn't distractive and helped create a certain atmosphere. I think the director wanted to create a very epic film—considering it was filmed in 10 weeks in France and Morocco—with a lot of tension and character development, but for some reason, everything ended up cut into bits of it and some under-layers of the story came to the surface and they became so explicit they appear as banal and forced, separating bit by bit from whatever was supposed to be the main truth of this film.It seemed like the movie was approached from the wrong angle and carried out with the wrong sensitivity and vision, because I fail to understand what it really was about and the concluding texts at the end only make me reinforce everything I have said since I almost didn't bother to read them. But it caught my attention the homage intention of them and it made me rethink of the whole movie again from that perspective. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything new and nothing appeared to have an extra value. If this was a movie about friendship or fighting for a cause, I don't understand why I didn't feel such weight, such connections, such struggle and such sacrifice, because, as I saw it, the characters weren't really risking anything or nothing that mattered to them anyway; when they tried to do noble acts, they looked more like they were just doing it for the hell of it as if they had nothing else better to do.Instead of seeing "Free Men" in this film, I saw empty men with no passion, no desire whatsoever for life. Stereotypes and victims with no will of their own.

Larry Silverstein The setting is Paris during the Nazi Occupation of World War 2. Tahar Rahim, after a powerful performance in "The Prophet", stars here as a young Algerian émigré making his living selling cigarettes and sundries on the black market. Rahim reminds me of a young Richard Gere and in my opinion has the potential to be a powerhouse in film.During a police raid, he is arrested but offered his freedom if he'll act as an informant at the local mosque. He agrees but is not very good at it and soon realizes his allegiance is more with the Muslim community than it is with the Vichy government.When a young woman, played by Lubna Azabel, who is being hidden at the mosque, and to whom Rahim is attracted, is arrested by the police and executed Rahim begins to work for the Resistance Movement, along with his cousin.As he soon learns, the director of the mosque, played by the wonderful actor Michael Lonsdale, is helping North African Jews, and others, obtain fake identities and sheltering them from the Nazis. This part of history I was not aware of and it was quite interesting to me.Rahim befriends an enormously talented local singer, played by Mahmoud Shalaby, and tries to protect him when the Nazis find out he is Jewish. The singing is the film is quite mesmerizing and adds to the enjoyment considerably.When Rahim's Resistance cell is uncovered he must, along with his compatriots, battle for his survival.In summary, I found this film to be well paced and quite engrossing, with enjoyable music and offers a lesson in history.

jakob13 Among the Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial of Ha Shoah or Holocaust, the names of Arabs who saved Jews are absent. Even Morocco's Mohammed V, who, defying Vichy authorities, put his 650,000 Jewish subjects under the Sherifian throne's protection and saved them not only from wearing the dreaded Yellow Star but as a community, has no place among the Righteous. In his own way, Ismaël Ferrouki is trying to correct this historical omission.The Franco-Moroccan film maker's Les Hommes Libres or Free Men opened quietly at New York's Quad Cinema on Friday March 16. The film is set in Paris at a time of a great moral dilemma when Jews were being rounded up by the French police for extermination camps. And in this dark hour of French indifference to these arrested, the rector of la Mosque de Paris Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, subtly played by Michel Lansdale, provided certificates to mainly, but not exclusively, to North African Jews, which attested that they were Muslims. Bengharit plays a cat-and-mouse game with the Nazi authorities and the collaborationist Pétain representatives to give aid and comfort to Jews, whom, as he says, "are one of us."The presence of North African Jews and Muslims in France has much to do with French colonialism. For, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia were under France's control; the need for workers attracted North Africans to metropolitan France; money earned there would be sent back to support families.Ferrouki's conceit has become controversial; his theme is based on oral history, anecdotes and some written testimony. Algerian-born Jewish historian Benjamin Stora has acted as an adviser on Free Men. Owing to the current climate of fear created since 9/11 and growing criticism of Israel, the very idea of a picture about Muslim saving Jews might seem aberrant if not perverse. And yet, the wife of Holocaust survivor and Peace-prize Nobelist Élie Wiesel, herself saved by Tunisian Muslims has unsuccessfully appealed to have her benefactor added to the list of the Righteous. The film's moral authority centers around friendship among Ben Ghabrit, Younis , a black marketer, admirably portrayed by Tahir Rahm, and the Algerian Jewish singer Salim Halali (Mahmoud Shalaby, an Israeli Arab) who has the voice of an angel.Halali sings in Arabic. His songs' lyrics help move the film's narrative; they set the mood of war's terrors and dangers even though they are at heart love songs. To Americans, Jews singing in Arabic may seem an anomaly. Nonetheless, the Sephardim in North Africa spoke Arabic. Unfamiliar to Americans as well are the names, say, of the Algerian Enrico Macias, the blind Reinette l'Oranaise and the Moroccan cantor Sami El Maghribi, who sang in Arabic.Running through Free Men is the thread of resistance against Fascism and colonialism among a handful of French and Algerians. Some knowledge of French and North African history would be helpful here: the name of Messali El Hadj, considered the father of Algeria's nationalist movement, is central to Franco-Algerian resistance in fighting for democracy. El Hadj's manifesto considered Jew and Muslim equal and part and parcel of the Algerian community. His unfulfilled hope was that at war's end France would accord Algerians full and equal rights.Younes slowly comes around to joining the resistance. He sees in Salim, not a Jew, but an Algerian soul mate, a mirror of his own identity. Ben Ghabrit provides Salim the means of survival in order to outwit the French police after his arrest.The film's story is told with simplicity and convincing honesty. An old Moroccan palace was transformed into the Paris Mosque.Les Hommes Libres should be seen if only to see a slice of North African Jewish and Muslim fraternity. Perhaps, it is hoped, it may spur the American film goer to read about North African history.