South Sentinel

From 2015 to 2018, the Gan Foundation for Cinema and Le Groupe Ouest joined forces to create LA SÉLECTION. A privileged moment of discovery and exchange allowing emerging filmmakers and scriptwriters with new feature film projects to present their film ideas to producers or co-producers, to future professional partners outside their usual networks. Mathieu Gérault took part in LA SÉLECTION 2015 and signed a contract with Agat Films (David Coujard).

Synopsis

The journey of Christian Lafayette, a French soldier who, in the aftermath of a murderous ambush in Afghanistan, has returned to France. Soon mixed up in trafficking opium with Mounir, his brother in arms who was wounded in the ambush, Lafayette, a foster child and tormented war hero, chooses a new family and life – a criminal’s life. To escape this vicious circle of violence, Christian must learn how to love.

LA SÉLECTION 2015 – Mathieu Gérault, 3rd from the left up | © Pauline Maillet

Intentions

“Sentinel South” explores the trauma of soldier Christian Lafayette, the devastating effects of war and the difficulties of returning to a normal life for this veteran with “no visible wounds”, an Uzbin hero caught up in the hellish post-war cycle.

To illustrate this difficult return, the story proposes a plot based on opium trafficking, another legacy of the Afghan war. Debt, robbery, criminal temptation, death of friends… For “Sentinel South” I was inspired by a certain American classicism – Eastwood, Lumet, Peckinpah… – which often explores with great simplicity, the intimate drift of the charismatic anti-hero.

“South Sentinel” attempts to illustrate the harrowing destiny of many young soldiers who engaged in the Afghanistan war, to describe their pain and difficulties on return to normal life. These highly traumatised soldiers feel cursed but also the chosen ones. They are initiated to tragedy, their experience is unique and difficult to share. They experience marginalisation.

In the form of a genre film, “Sentinel South” attempts to follow this path shaped by the suffering of men and the complex question of involvement in war.