Synopsis
Father & Soldier (Tirailleurs, 2023) is a French war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Mathieu Vadepied and starring Omar Sy. The year is 1917. Bakary Diallo is a farmer from a West African French colony whose teenage son Thierno has been conscripted — no choice given, no return date offered. Bakary enlists voluntarily to stay close to him.
The two end up in the same unit on the Western Front, but they're drifting apart rather than together. Thierno is learning what it means to be a soldier, finding camaraderie in the trenches. Bakary has one objective: get his son out of this alive. The French military apparatus treats both of them as interchangeable bodies, and the film doesn't soften that fact. Omar Sy plays Bakary with a stillness that hits harder than rage would — a man from a different world, utterly out of place, utterly immovable.
The tirailleurs sénégalais — colonial African troops mobilised by France across both World Wars — rarely get this perspective on screen. Stream Father & Soldier (2023) online on iFILM.
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