Nothing to Report

Yves Boisset's 1973 film follows three French reservists sent to Algeria in 1956. Rémy, Alain and Raymond have no appetite for the army; they are put into a disciplinary battalion and dropped into the middle of the war. What they see changes them, but the film's real target is not heroism, it is the phrase the army wrote at the bottom of every report: nothing to report. The Algerian war stayed a taboo in France for a long time; the state did not even call it a war until 1999. Boisset was blocked on funding three times, refused access to barracks, unable to obtain uniforms, and denied permission to shoot in Algeria, so the film was made in Tunisia. Reels of film went missing once shooting was over.