Les camps du silence (1989)

Overview

Documentary film about the camps in the south of France, in which Spanish civil war refugees and the volunteers of the "international brigades", non-sedentary people and Alsatian and foreign Jews were interned from 1939 onwards. Under the Vichy regime, the camps were used to intern other criminalized population groups and French Jews, who were also deported from there to extermination camps. In a mosaic of artificially framed shots, formerly interned contemporary witnesses describe their own life stories. Director Mangiante not only sheds light on the history of the camps, but also the mechanisms of personal memory.