A Self-Made Hero

A Self-Made Hero (Un héros très discret, 1996) is Jacques Audiard's French tragicomedy, free to watch online on iFILM. The war has only just ended. Albert Dehousse learns an ugly truth: his father was no Resistance hero, and his mother quietly collaborated with the occupiers.

So a mild-mannered book salesman decides to build himself from scratch. Albert memorizes the gestures, the war stories, other men's pasts — then walks into postwar Paris as a flawless underground veteran who never existed. The better the lie, the higher he rises: new contacts, a uniform, the trust of men who actually fought. Mathieu Kassovitz plays the impostor without a single false note.

Audiard adapted the picture from Jean-François Deniau's novel and carried the Best Screenplay prize home from Cannes. It poses as a light comedy while asking something uncomfortable: how a whole country invented a heroic past for itself once the occupation was over. Jean-Louis Trintignant, Sandrine Kiberlain and Albert Dupontel fill out the cast. One for anyone who likes sharp European cinema with a false bottom. Stream A Self-Made Hero (1996) online on iFILM.