Four young Africans, living in the Ardennes where this dive into the Great War carried by Omar Sy, is under the blow of an obligation to leave French territory.
For the Education Without Borders Network (RESF), it is a “Tragic irony of history, and of History”. Four young African men, arrived in France several years ago and having done extras for the historical film carried by Omar Sy Skirmishers, have received since the filming of the drama an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF).
RESF told France Bleu that these young people from Mali or even Côte d’Ivoire arrived in the Ardennes where the feature film was shot, almost five years ago for the oldest. Well integrated, they work in large companies in the region in trades that could be said to be in tension. And to lament,it’s a story of papers that catches up with them even though they’ve been there for several years. Grandsons of skirmishers, great-grandsons of skirmishers, playing in a film about skirmishers, and today forced to leave».
Contacted by France Bleu and Le Parisien, the Ardennes prefecture indicates that there is only one file under investigation, but does not know for the moment the result of the decisions taken concerning the other three.
Destinies in the spotlight for the first time
Released in France on Wednesday, Skirmishers by Mathieu Vadepied, with actor Omar Sy, tells the story of Thierno, forcibly recruited in a Senegalese village by the French army in 1917, and his father who voluntarily enlists to watch over him in this jump to the unknown, the discovery of France plunged into the hell of the Great War.
Created by Napoleon III in 1857 in Senegal, hence its name, the infantry corps of skirmishers then expanded in its recruitment to men from other regions of West and Central Africa conquered by France at the end of the 19th century. The skirmishers were more than 200,000 to fight during the First World War, 150,000 for the Second, 60,000 in Indochina. With this film, it is one of the first times that their story has been brought to the screen.
At the beginning of the year, the French government announced that the twenty of the last “Senegalese skirmishers” still alive will be able to return to their country of origin while receiving the minimum old age.