The First Man

Algeria, 1957. Jacques Cormery is a writer known in France, returning to the city he was born in. The country is split: one side wants to stay part of France, the other wants independence. Cormery belongs fully to neither, and both sides let him feel it. In the city he finds his mother, a woman who cannot read, does not speak much, and does not know what her son writes. In flashback his childhood returns: poverty, a hard grandmother, the teacher who got him an education, an Arab boy he was friends with. Gianni Amelio directs; a hundred and one minutes, with Jacques Gamblin as Cormery. It is adapted from the unfinished novel Albert Camus was working on when he died; the manuscript was found in the wreck of the car crash that killed him and was not published until 1994.