The Cinema, presented by Elia Bichoy

L’armée des ombres (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969, 2h30)

France, 1942. Suspected of Gaullist ideas, engineer Philippe Gerbier is incarcerated then moved to the Gestapo from which he manages to escape. He reveals to be one of the leaders of the Résistance, the men and women separated by everything except for the will the act: Luc Jardie, the mathematician and philosopher, his brother Jean-François, a hothead tempted with adventure -each totally oblivious of the others’ endeavors-, Mathilde, Le Masque, Le Bison, and a handful of other anonymous people… It’s a long journey in the night which starts with these soldiers of secrecy, moving between intelligence communications and political assassinations, as they’re tracked by the Gestapo and the Vichy Police.  A seemingly dead-end journey for most of them. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel published in 1943.