Ben Hamidou and Sam Touzani
Part of the Belgian Cultural Week
in French, subtitled in Portuguese
Sinopsis
Never will Belgium and France forget the heroes who fought and gave their lives for their country and for freedom, said the Mayor of Gembloux, in the south of Belgium, in 1940. But nobody remembered the 2,000 Moroccans and Africans who fought in the French army at the beginning of the Second World War, until Ben Hamidou and Sam Touzani discovered the story almost by chance. Intrigued by a story told to them by an old Moroccan in a Brussels tea house, the two Belgian actors of Moroccan origin decided to investigate the frequently forced recruitment of soldiers who came from the colonial territories.
Through the life of Mortar, who came from the mountains of North Morocco, Gembloux tells a forgotten part of European History, with a sense of historical rigour, but also with a great deal of humour.