Of Gods and Men

Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux) won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2010 and the César for Best Film. After Don't Forget You're Going to Die and Le Petit Lieutenant, it confirmed Beauvois as a director drawn to morally serious stories about institutions. It is based on the real history of the Cistercian-Trappist community at the Notre-Dame de l'Atlas monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria, during the Algerian Civil War, in the years leading up to May 1996.

The monks, led by their prior Christian de Chergé (Lambert Wilson), live in the Atlas Mountains and provide medical and agricultural help to the Muslim villagers around them. As Islamist violence escalates in the early 1990s, with the GIA (the Armed Islamic Group) murdering foreigners and supporters of the Algerian government, the brothers must decide together whether to stay at the monastery or go back to France. Michael Lonsdale plays the elderly Brother Luc, the monastery's doctor, and Olivier Rabourdin plays Christophe.

Beauvois films the brothers' communal religious life (the divine office, the choral chanting, the daily work of the monastery) over several months as the political situation around them deteriorates. His use of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is among the most discussed musical choices in recent French religious cinema. It is a historical drama and a close study of a Catholic monastic community in North Africa, and it asks what kind of moral commitment requires what kind of risk, without pretending the answer is easy.