Filmmakers always complain about the conditions under which they must shoot: the process, they insist, is very much like going to war. French master Bertrand Tavernier's film delightfully literalizes that image, showing us directors who must squeeze in takes between air raids, and being forced to bring their films in under budget under threat of being sent to the Russian Front. Continental Films was a German-owned movie studio located in occupied Paris. French moviemakers and workmen were caught between Nazi "efficiency" and British bombs as they tried to ply their trade under extremely adverse conditions. The studio was a microcosm for the Occupation: all the contradictions of that painfully-unresolved history, the heroism and compromise, collaboration and resistance, churn among those who work here — as an occupied community, and even as individuals. The first victim of the regime is the notion of neatly dividing the moral landscape into black and white. The lives of two characters, based on real people, intertwine and across a spectrum of others' responses to occupation. A marathon of a film, yet it never drags: a slick and smart period movie that raises hard questions, and not just for the characters in the story.

Safe Conduct is part of "Codes & Consequences", the Featured Screenings program at Flickerings at Cornerstone Festival, July 2-5, 2003.

See complete Schedule.