Fall of 1914. French and Germans, living in colonies side by side (Togo or Cameroon, take your pick), feel compelled to be at war with each other since that is what's happening back home, too. Naively and almost playfully at first, until the game starts getting uglier and they experience the horror of casualties nobody had really wanted. Both sides get professional help and they become hardened by the everyday routine (the Germans winning, because their officer studied in Heidelberg...)and start killing each other more efficiently, until finally the war ends and the British arrive to restore law and order in the territories. The long column of British troops, all Africans and Asians, is led by one junior officer on horseback - who when his face is eventually revealed, turns out to be Indian.
Annaud shot the film in the Ivory Coast, then a very staunchly pro-French country. He refused to show anybody the script and pretended he was shooting a very different type of movie. At the gala premiere performance in Abidjan, when the French officials realized the entire picture was a spoof on French colonial policies, they walked out, much to the embarrassment of the Ivorians, who were just as unaware of what Annaud had been up to...
