Too controversial to be shown on French TV when first released – after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1983 – TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT is the story of men and women from Armenia, Poland, and Romania, mostly Jews, who fought the German occupation of Paris during World War II.

Most infamously, there were 21 members of the Manouchian Group, who were part of the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée), the immigrant section of the French Resistance. They were executed by firing squad on February 21, 1944, after being found guilty of “terrorism” by a German military court. One woman was beheaded on her birthday.

In the film we meet seven surviving comrades of the executed resistance members. They demonstrate how to make and throw bombs, re-enact attacks on German officers at the actual locations throughout Paris, and share the stories of women who served as key intelligence agents. Seated at his sewing machine, a tailor, Raymond Kojitsky shows how he lit a bomb with his cigarette and threw it into a parking garage. “It was like a stroll in the park.”

Mosco Boucault's TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT provoked unsettling debates about how the Manouchian Group was captured, were they abandoned by the larger resistance movement led by the Communist party, or betrayed? And more generally, why did the French establishment (and history books) never fully embrace the immigrant and Jewish fighters who were the backbone of armed resistance in Paris? The film provides a powerful corrective to myths of the French resistance.

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Select Accolades

• Cannes Film Festival 1983