‘Nobody would forgive me if I told the truth’: new film about pacifist turned Nazi collaborator divides France

In Les Rayons et les Ombres, Jean Dujardin plays a real-life press baron partying during the horrors of the second world war. Director Xavier Giannoli discusses bringing this still sensitive topic to light Xavier Giannoli’s new film Les Rayons et les Ombres (Rays and Shadows) is told from the postwar perspective of Corinne Luchaire, a French actor who was once hailed as “the new Garbo” but grew too close to the Nazis during the German occupation years. As Luchaire records her thoughts on a borrowed tape recorder, she struggles to reconcile her unfaltering devotion to her father, the once-powerful press baron Jean, with his 1946 execution for treason. Her wilful blindness collapses as the Jewish director who helped launch her career visits her cramped flat. When Corinne, played by newcomer Nastya Golubeva Carax, enquires after his sister, he reveals that she died in a concentration camp. “I didn’t know,” murmurs Corinne, only to be met with the devastating reply: “Did you even try to ...

The Old Oak review – Ken Loach’s fierce final call for compassion and solidarity

A northern pub landlord confronts locals’ hostility towards Syrian immigrants in Loach’s latest – and possibly last – piece of politically trenchant cinema

A decade or so ago, the rumour was that Ken Loach was getting ready to quit. Then began a new parade of Conservative prime ministers in this country, each shiftier and more mediocre than the last; Loach decided he had more to say and do after all. What followed was a blaze of energy, anger and productivity culminating in a remarkable late surge – in fact, a trilogy, of which this might come to be seen as the final episode. Working with his regular collaborator, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, Loach has been taking on issues and stories that you don’t see on the TV news or on glitzy streaming services, and showed that film-makers could actually intervene in the real world. Loach got questions about poverty and austerity asked in parliament; he moved the dial.

Loach has also sought out the painful and unfashionable subjects, marching to where the gunfire has been loudest. With I, Daniel Blake it was the vivisectional experiment of austerity; with Sorry We Missed You it was the serfdom of the gig economy. Now, in The Old Oak, it is that ugly phenomenon from which London’s liberal classes have turned away in sorrowing distaste: immigrants housed in hostels all over the UK who are being abused and attacked by local people radicalised by social media.

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