In 1973, a wave of racist murders swept through France’s Algerian immigrant communities. Fifty years later, survivors and families break their silence, revisiting streets, memories, and wounds long buried. Silent Murder is a journey through forgotten violence, state indifference, and the birth of the first Arab civil rights movement in France.
Indésirables is a feature-length documentary focused on the wave of racist violence against Algerian immigrants in France during 1973. The film investigates a series of murders targeting North African workers that were never fully prosecuted, despite clear racial motivations. Through detailed archival research and interviews with survivors, the documentary reveals how these crimes, along with state inaction, catalyzed the creation of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA), the first civil rights movement for Arab immigrants in France.
Archive photograph: demonstration against the Marcellin-Fontanet circulars, Paris, 1973, © Jacques Pavlovsky
