MHM Film Club: “Army of Crime” (2009)

Army of Crime tells the story of a small group of young immigrants in France who resist the Nazi occupation of France.

Directed by Robert Guédiguian.

The film is set in Paris in 1941, where the poet Missak Manouchian leads a mixed bag of youngsters and émigrés in a clandestine battle against the Nazi occupation. Twenty-two men and one woman fight for the ideal and of freedom, facing immense dangers that arise from their actions. News of their daring attacks, including the assassination of an SS General, eventually reaches Berlin. Under the orders of the Gestapo, French police and collaborators hound Manouchian and his Résistants, who must confront torture by their persecutors, the Nazis’ policy of collective reprisals, and betrayal in their own midst.

Sponsored by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum and the Processes of Signification Emerging Research Group (PSERG), Deakin University.