Movies

L'Armée du Crime (2009)

This film, directed by Robert Guédiguian, an Armenian filmmaker, traces the life of the resistor from his arrival in France with his wife to his decision to take up arms to fight against Nazism. Starring Simon Abkarian and Virginie Ledoyen in the lead roles, this film focuses on March 1942, when Missak Manouchian goes into hiding with his foreign friends to defend France's human rights.

L’Affiche Rouge (1976)

A feature film by Frank Cassenti.

On the walls of occupied France, a red poster designated to public condemnation a group of foreign resistors, mostly communists, led by the Armenian Missak Manouchian. Arrested during a vast German raid, 22 of these 23 immigrant partisans fighting for a free France were shot at Mont Valérien on February 21, 1944. The twenty-third, a woman, was beheaded by the Nazis on May 10, 1944. This film tells the courageous story of this army of shadows, of these foreign martyrs of the French Resistance.

Manouchian et ceux de l'Affiche rouge (2024)

Directed by Hugues Nancy and Denis Peschanski, this documentary is narrated by the singer Arthur Teboul (Feu! Chatterton). In February 1944, in a courtyard of Fresnes prison, the Germans stage an event to stigmatize a group of communist resistors, mostly foreigners and Jews, who were arrested a few weeks earlier. The propaganda aims to discredit these fighters and portray them as terrorists and criminals, even though they had managed to carry out numerous attacks against the occupiers in Paris. The red poster, plastered in thousands of copies across the country, would immortalize them. They would later be executed at Mont-Valérien near Paris. Missak Manouchian, the Armenian who led these fighters, now embodies this group in collective memory as he enters the Pantheon, on behalf of all his comrades, 80 years after their execution.

Watch (French)

M. Manouchian (2024)

This four-episode series, created by Florence Kieffer, Clément Magnin, and Damien RIHL, also revisits the Red Poster, as well as the life of the poet-worker, hero of the Resistance, and deeply devoted lover of his wife Mélinée.

Watch (French)

Vingt et trois étrangers et nos frères pourtant (2024)

This documentary was directed by Mosco Levi Boucault on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the execution of Missak Manouchian. It serves as an epilogue to his documentary 'Des terroristes à la retraite' made almost 40 years earlier. The title is taken from the poem by Aragon, set to music by Léo Ferré. It portrays with deep emotion five of the resistors from the FTP-MOI – four men and one woman. Letters, testimonies, and words from their families shed light on these heroes who died for the love of their nation.

Books

Manouchian - Témoignage suivi de poèmes, lettres et documents

By Mélinée Manouchian.
Published by Parenthèses Editions.

Missak, l'enfant de l'affiche rouge

By Didier Daeninckx and Laurent Corvaisier.
Published by Rue du Monde Editions.

Manouchian

Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, two orphans of the Armenian genocide engaged in the French Resistance.

By Astrig Atamian, Daniel Peschanski, Claire Mouradian.
Published by Textuel Editions.