Completed - FRENCH - Drama, Historical - 100 minutes
Accepting to be a victim or striving to be part of the survivors...but at what cost?
Year of production : 2009 Director(s) : Nicolas STEIL Writer(s) : Jean-Louis SCHLESSER, Nicolas STEIL Cast : Carlo BRANDT, Charles MÜLLER, Grégoire LEPRINCE-RINGUET, Marianne BASLER, Michel VOÏTA, Thierry VAN WERVEKE Producer(s) : Gérard RUEY (Cab Production), Nicolas STEIL (Iris Productions)
Our past sticks with us. Ours, our family’s and our country’s. Without getting to the bottom of it, without digging up the suffering we have buried, evolution is not possible. Wartime slows history down, but for men decisions are accelerated: Collaborate with the enemy, or resist? However, we have to ask ourselves an even more fundamental question: Take on the role of a victim, or try to survive... but at what cost? François, a 21-year-old, is living in a small country that Nazi Germany has just annexed. His father, who collaborates with the fascist regime, forced him to go to German university. But François committed a first act of disobedience: he left this place that preached racial hatred. Now he is facing a Cornelian choice: to become forcibly enrolled and leave for the Russian front to fight the Allies or to become a draft dodger, buried alive in the cold and damp mines for months on end without seeing the light of day, the only hope being the Liberation. « Draft dodgers » is a grasping psychological drama that makes us experience the path of a young man who is depersonalized by a heavy family history, but will manage to find himself at the cost of his own life.
Country(ies) : LUXEMBOURG, SWITZERLAND