From 1962 to 2000 – from the end of the war in Algeria to the end of conscription – several generations of young people had been enlisted into military service during peace time.
How did these conscripts feel about their experience with the Armed Forces and a service that was both highly symbolic and also very concrete? By association, how did their wives, girl friends and mothers cope? Over the years, though, this deep-rooted “ritual” had gradually lost its meaning and had finally been scrapped at the end of last century.

This film is a trip down memory lane for a number of former conscripts who recall their soldiering days, bringing back stories of this particular moment in time (a year of their lives, their youth, the “twenty-somethings”) and a particular place ( the barracks). While they remember, long-forgotten anecdotes resurface and other things, that they’d rather not talk about…
Through these personal stories and many archival images, the film explores a certain military “culture” with its customs, objects and songs that represent a collective memory for the conscripts and which embody today the by-gone days of military service. The individual memories of this “rite of passage” towards adulthood paint a colourful picture of what it was like to be young during the last four decades of “the service”.

AVAILABLE FOR SCREENING: French version only.