To Die a Frenchman

Born in the former French colony of Pondicherry in India, Monsieur Mounissamy fights for the French citizenship that he believes to be his right. To Die a Frenchman offers a poignant, complex examination of the intersections of class, nationality and post-colonial identity.

When France relinquished the colonial outpost of Pondicherry after India’s independence in 1947, it gave its subjects the option between French and Indian citizenships. Inadequately publicised, this voluntary path to enfranchisement failed to reach the vast majority of Pondicherry’s population, who became Indian citizens by default. A fraction of those left behind continue to fight for what they perceive to be their birthright. 

Made in a raw, cinéma vérité style, Pankaj Rishi Kumar’s moving documentary centres on one such refugee of history, the aging Mounissamy. For this working-class child of the colony, French identity is both a source of sustaining fantasy and everyday frustration. In Mounissamy’s veneration of an imperial power that had no love to spare for people like him, Kumar sees a wider reflection of India’s conflicted relationship to the material and ideological remnants of its colonial past.  

As Mounissamy pursues this cause, his frail, almost skeletal body becomes the last living repository of a forgotten chapter of Indian history. Yet, it is his incredible spirit and sense of justice that prevails.

– Srikanth Srinivasan

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