In this Andre Gide adaptation, an activist is released after many years in prison and returns home, shaking up established relationships among his family members at the farm governed by his strict father. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.
"Ambassadors" is a euphemistic name given by the French to Arab "guest-workers," or imported laborers. In this film, the Arab workers are shown enduring the difficulties of life in a racist society, as well as the hardships they impose on one another.
During the Algerian war of independence, one of the FLN's leaders was arrested by the army, which uses the most violent methods to make the prisoners talk. The use of torture poses a case of conscience to a French officer. A play between the field against the field, between the tortured and his torturer, behind a stifling closed door.
An Algerian doctor decides to leave the troubles in Algiers and goes back to his hometown, a small village lost in the mountains. There, however, the situation is explosive as well, as the guerilla is active and the French military has to keep a close watch on the locals...
