The 17th International Film Festival on Resistance will take place in Nice from November 14 to 23. This festival is organized by the Azuréenne Association of Friends of the Museum of Resistance.
Regarding events or manifestations, the question is often asked: Why? Why a film festival on resistance? Beyond the homage and the duty to remember, there is the historical necessity to evoke this dark period of our history. While there were traitors who sold themselves to the enemy, there were also heroes, often anonymous, who resisted the occupier and refused to bow their heads and bend their spines before defeat.
This is not the place to discuss choices dictated by politics, but solely to keep in memory these heroes, thanks to whom we can today agree or, on the contrary, express our disagreement with those who govern us, and this freedom of choice is called liberty. This festival is thus a reminder of this chapter of our history where intolerance and hatred of the other were the leitmotif of a government subjugated by the occupier.
Today, we must be vigilant and ensure that communitarianism does not trap certain layers of society in a Manichean vision of the world, and that as a reaction, other layers of society do not respond with a rejection of the other. Both risks are real and feed off each other. Laxity is the seed of intolerance, said a great thinker of the 19th century.
The festival would thus be an opportunity to raise awareness of this danger, but it is up to politicians to address it, and that is no longer our focus.
We will conclude our remarks with a maxim found on a tomb in the Château cemetery in Nice: “The true tomb of the dead is in the heart of the living.”
Thierry Jan
