Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès (To Be Twenty in the Aures)

Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès (To Be Twenty in the Aures) is a 1972 film by René Vautier.

A group of young pacifists from Brittany is taken to a camp destined to deserters. They end up by accepting the increasing violence with which they are trained, and become true killing machines. 

In April, 1961, they are moved to the Aurès mountains in Algeria where they face off against troops from the National Liberation Army. During the battle, the battalion captures a rebel fighter which they shall have to execute the next morning. Their most precious ideals are supposed to become overridden by sheer discipline.

To stay faithful to his pacifist values, Noël, will do something radical.

René Vautier: “I have always considered a camera as a weapon of testimony. But it is not a weapon that kills. On the contrary, it can be an instrument of peace. This is why I fought for fifty years for there to be dialogues of images, and all the films that I have made, I consider that they are dialogues of images. The director takes sides. He is committed to one side, but he also gives the floor to the people opposite."