Movie Review: ‘Free Men’

Wartime can make for curious allies. Ismael Ferroukhi’s “Free Men” dramatizes one such little-known nugget of World War II resistance in Nazi-occupied France: the Paris Mosque’s sheltering of North African Jews by providing them with falsified Muslim identification.

Director/co-writer Ferroukhi’s gateway into this world is an Algerian-born black market operator named Younes (Tahar Rahim), coerced by German authorities into spying on Vichy-friendly, culturally sophisticated mosque director Ben Ghabrit (a true historical figure, played with effortless authorial weight by Michael Lonsdale). Younes is eventually swayed to the mosque’s protection of freedom fighters, however, through his friendship with talented singer — and secret Jew — Salim (Mahmoud Shalaby).

As far as political awakenings go, Ferroukhi never makes Younes’ transformation a melodramatic sea change, preferring to let a tense atmosphere of burgeoning immigrant workers’ rights, urgent spycraft and nudged morality show how someone hard-wired for self-preservation can turn those skills toward helping others.

Rahim, star of “A Prophet,” once again shows how quietly magnetic and appealingly enigmatic he can be, while Ferroukhi’s use of music — whether the lone trumpet underscoring Younes’ actions or the scenes in which Salim’s Arab Andalusian singing (dubbed by Pinhas Cohen) brings momentary joy to hounded lives — is exemplary.

“Free Men.” No MPAA rating; In French with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes. At the Nuart, West Los Angeles.