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Jacques Vergès in ‘THE TERROR’S ADVOCATE’

‘UN CERTAIN REGARD’ SELECTION TERRIFIES WITH FILM BY BARBET SCHROEDER

‘Un Certain Regard’ is more or less what the festival wanted in its selection but wouldn’t fit the competition. Good films always stand out in this side section of Cannes Film Festival. Some are equally disputed by the other selections, the ‘Directors’ Fortnight and the ‘Critics’ Week’.


‘Un Certain Regard’ seems to always get the advantage. It would be enough to talk about the explosive and terrifying documentary by Barbet Schroeder L’AVOCAT DE LA TERREUR/ THE TERROR’S ADVOCATE. In discussion, the enigmatic and deranging historical role of lawyer Jacques Vergès. A weird being, of sophisticated cynicism who got famous for defending in the beginning of his career the Algerian terrorist Djamila Bouhired and the cause of Algeria’s liberation of French colonization. At this moment of post-Second War, few Algerians, men, women or children, had the privilege of trial as in Djamila’s case, who was condemned to die in the guillotine. Schroeder’s film recalls the fact that in only one repression act in Argel, French occupation troops might have killed around 40 thousand civilians.
Djamila, the cause of demonstrations and petitions all around the world, escaped death and got married to the lawyer. Jacques Bergès’s track is lost for seven years. His vanishing is connected to a period of collaboration with Pol Pot and his bloody Red Khmer regime.


Along his millionaire career, the lawyer seems to have actually sold his sold to the devil. He defended indistinctively almost all African dictators in international courts and most recently the ‘Butcher of Lyon‘, Nazi Klaus Barbie. His arguments on the film, on why to accept the defense, are a revolting demonstration of cynicism. He doesn’t use the common arguments that anyone needs a defense. He attributes his action to a unique opportunity of getting from his ‘client’ confessions about the collaboration of French militaries with the German occupation troops.


But before that we will see the lawyer acting comfortably in the defense of the Palestine cause and of a growing terrorism that flooded Europe with attacks in the 1970’s and 1980’s, ending up as the attorney of the most wanted terrorist in the world – Carlos the Jackal, with his ramifications in Middle East, East Germany and France. According to the secret files of the effective espionage in East Germany, Jacques Vergès would have had many secret meetings with Carlos and advantages taken from his millionaire blackmailing of Opep and other Estate and Para-estate organizations.


More information on this and other films in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ selection at:
www.festival-cannes.org

English version: Laura Rebessi