L'Année dernière à Vichy
Paule Muxel, Bertrand de Solliers
2008 - 100 min - Numérique - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

A documentary film about the last witnesses remaining who lived during the period when Philippe Petain was installed as head of the collaborationist wartime government headquartered in Vichy France. While there have been many films about the Nazi Occupation of France, this is the first to interview people who lived in this still controversial time and place - even today Vichy still carries the stain of the past.
More than sixty years after, this film tells about the memories of those who were there, in l940, aged from 13 to 30. The film is shot in the spa town of Vichy, in central France. It inhabits the town with those who were there, shows it as it is today and allows us to understand the nuances and the complexity of those dark years.
From former followers of Petain (petainists) to members of the Resistance, to ordinary French people who vary by age and attitude, each witness speaks with emotion and awareness of a time that many below a certain age in France don't even know about.
From the “coup d'État” that crushed the lawful French Republic, the difficulty choices during a period marked by fear, betrayal and collaboration, until the liberation, the film reveals the political states of awareness of that time.
This is a new approach to Vichy, one that shows how attitudes mingled with the times for each of these last witnesses; the film also shows how memory is both objective and subjective.