Pakistan’s Baluch Insurgency

A sophisticated armed fight for a province’s autonomy
Pakistan’s Baluch insurgency Tuesday 10 October 2006
Serious troubles have erupted in the Pakistan province of Baluchistan since the assassination of an opposition leader in August. Pressure for independence is growing in this region bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which challenges Pakistan’s authority.
by Selig S Harrison
THE slow-motion genocide being inflicted on Baluch tribesmen in the mountains and deserts of southwestern Pakistan does not yet qualify as a major humanitarian catastrophe compared with the slaughter in Darfur or Chechnya. “Only” 2,260 Baluch fled their villages in August to escape bombing and strafing by the US-supplied F-16 fighter jets and Cobra helicopter gunships of the Pakistan air force, but as casualty figures mount, it will be harder to ignore the human costs of the Baluch independence (1) struggle and its political repercussions in other restive minority regions of multi-ethnic Pakistan (2).
Already, in neighboring Sindh, separatists who share Baluch opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf are reviving their long-simmering movement for a sovereign Sindhi state, or a Sindhi-Baluch federation, that would stretch along the Arabian Sea from Iran in the west to the Indian border. Many Sindhi leaders openly express their hope that instability in Pakistan will tempt India to help them, militarily and economically, to secede from Pakistan as Bangladesh did with Indian help in 1971.
Some 6 million Baluch were forcibly incorporated into Pakistan when it was created in 1947. This is the fourth insurgency they have fought to protest against economic and political discrimination. In the most bitter insurgency, from 1973 to 1977, some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch were involved in the fighting.
Iran, like Pakistan, was then an ally of the United States. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who feared that the insurgency would spread across the border to 1.2 million Baluch living in eastern Iran, sent 30 Cobra gunships with Iranian pilots to help Islamabad. But this time Iran is not a US ally, and Iran and Pakistan are at odds. Tehran charges that US Special Forces units are using bases in Pakistan for undercover operations inside Iran designed to foment Baluch opposition to the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Much of the anger that now motivates the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) is driven by memories of Pakistani scorched earth tactics in past battles. In a climactic battle in 1974, Pakistani forces, frustrated by their inability to find Baluch guerrilla units hiding in the mountains, bombed, strafed and burned the encampments of some 15,000 Baluch families who had taken their livestock to graze in the fertile Chamalang Valley, forcing the guerrillas to come out from their hideouts to defend their women and children.
‘Indiscrimate bombing’
In the current fighting, which started in January 2005, the independent Pakistan Human Rights Commission has reported that “indiscriminate bombing and strafing” by F-16s and Cobra gunships are again being used to draw the guerrillas into the open. Six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men, are deployed in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas where the fighting is most intense.
Musharraf is using new methods, more repressive than those of his predecessors, to crush the insurgency. In the past Baluch activists were generally arrested on formal charges and sentenced to fixed terms in prisons known to their families. This time Baluch spokesmen have reported large-scale kidnappings and disappearances, charging that Pakistani forces have rounded up hundreds of Baluch youths on unspecified charges and taken them to unknown locations.
The big difference between earlier phases of the Baluch struggle and the present one is that Islamabad has so far not been able to play off feuding tribes against each other. Equally importantly, it faces a unified nationalist movement under younger leadership drawn not only from tribal leaders but also from an emergent, literate Baluch middle class that did not exist three decades ago. Another difference is that the Baluch have a better armed, more disciplined fighting force in the BLA. Baluch leaders say that rich compatriots and sympathisers in the Persian Gulf provide money needed to buy weapons in the flourishing black market along the Afghan frontier.
President Musharraf has repeatedly accused India of supplying weapons to the Baluch insurgents and funds to Sindhi separatist groups, but has provided no evidence to back up these charges. India denies the accusations. At the same time New Delhi has issued periodic statements expressing concern at the fighting and calling for political dialogue.
India brushes aside suggestions that it might be tempted to help Sindhi and Baluch insurgents if the situation in Pakistan continues to unravel. Indian leaders say that. on the contrary, India wants a stable Pakistan that will negotiate a peace settlement in Kashmir so that both sides can wind down their costly arms race. But many India media commentators appear happy to see Musharraf tied down in Baluchistan and hope that the crisis will force him to reduce Pakistani support for extremist Islamic insurgents in Kashmir.
Unlike India, Iran has its own Baluch minority and fears Baluch nationalism. The Baluchistan People’s party, one of the leading Baluch groups in Iran, said on 5 August that a radical Shia cleric, Hojatol Ibrahim Nekoonam, recently installed as the justice minister of Iran’s Baluchistan province, has launched a campaign of military and police repression spearheaded by the Mersad clerical secret police, in which hundreds of Baluch have been rounded up and, in many cases, executed on charges of collaborating with the US.
Apart from being smaller in number, the Baluch in Iran are not as politically conscious or as well organised as those in Pakistan, and their principal leaders dismiss the idea of secession or of union with the Baluch in Pakistan. The Baluchistan People’s party is part of a coalition with groups representing other disaffected minorities in Iran — the Kurds, Azeri Turks and Khuzestani Arabs — which is seeking a federal restructuring in which Iran would retain control over foreign affairs, defence, communications and foreign trade, but cede autonomy in other spheres to three minority autonomous regions.
Goal of the insurgency
In Pakistan, where the Baluch have been radicalised by their periodic military struggles with Islamabad, many Baluch leaders believe that the goal of the insurgency should be an independent Baluchistan, unless the military regime is willing to grant the provincial autonomy envisaged in the 1973 constitution, which successive military regimes, including the present one, have nullified. What the Baluch, Sindhis, and a third, more assimilated ethnic minority, the Pashtuns, want above all is an end to the blatant economic discrimination by the dominant Punjabis.
Most of Pakistan’s natural resources are in Baluchistan, including natural gas, uranium, copper and potentially rich oil reserves. Although 36% of the gas produced in Pakistan comes from the province, Baluchistan consumes only a fraction of production because it is the most impoverished area of the country. For decades, Punjabi-dominated central governments have denied Baluchistan a fair share of development funds and paid only 12% of the royalties due to it for its gas. Similarly, the Sindhi and Pashtun areas have consistently been denied fair access to the waters of the Indus River by dam projects that channel the lion’s share of the water to the Punjab.
In a television speech on 20 July, devoted mostly to Baluchistan, Musharraf dismissed Baluch charges of economic discrimination and announced a $49.8m development programme for the province, half for roads and other infrastructure projects. The “real exploiters” of the Baluch, he said, are the tribal chieftains, known as sardars, who “have stolen development funds for themselves”. He claimed that the armed forces have been sent into Baluchistan to protect the Baluch from their leaders while development proceeds. Musharraf blamed the insurgency on the sardars, principally Akbar Bugti, who was killed on 26 August when the army blew up a cave where he was hiding. But the current insurgency is not being led by the tribal elders but by a new generation of politically conscious Baluch nationalists.
What makes negotiations on autonomy difficult are the economic issues relating to taxation and to the terms for sharing the resulting revenues from the development of oil, gas and other natural resources. In most proposals for a devolution of power to the provinces, Baluch and Sindhi leaders have argued that taxes collected by the central government should not be allocated, as at present, solely on a population basis, which favours the Punjab; instead, it has been suggested, half should be allocated on a population basis, while the rest should be distributed in accordance with the amount collected in each province. Since the provinces have equal representation in the Senate, even under the 1973 constitution, the upper chamber should be given greater powers, with the Senate, rather than the president or prime minister, empowered to dissolve a provincial legislature or to declare an emergency.
A more extreme demand is that Baluch, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Punjabis should have complete parity in both chambers of the National Assembly as well as in civil service and military recruitment, irrespective of population disparities. All factions among the minorities give priority to radically upgraded representation in the civil service and the armed forces, and all want constitutional safeguards to prevent the central government from arbitrarily removing an elected provincial government, as Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto did in 1973. The issue of safeguards against arbitrary central intervention is likely to be a non-negotiable one for the minorities, since they are seeking not only the substance, but also the feeling, of autonomy.
A tiny minority
The Baluch are only 3.57% of Pakistan’s 165.8 million people, and the three minorities combined claim only 33%. Yet they identify themselves with ethnic homelands that cover 72% of Pakistan’s territory. To the Punjabis, it is galling that the minorities should advance proprietary claims over such large areas. For this reason, the prospects for a restoration of the 1973 constitution appear bleak.
In the final analysis, the possibility of a constitutional compromise is inseparably linked with the overall course of the struggle for democratisation. With continued military rule, the Baluch insurgency and the growing movement for Sindhi rights will be radicalised. But it is unlikely that the Baluch could prevail militarily over Pakistani forces and establish an independent state, even with Sindhi help, unless India intervenes as part of a broader confrontation with Islamabad. The prospect in late 2006 is for a continuing, inconclusive struggle by the Baluch and Sindhis against Islamabad, that will debilitate Pakistan.
In the eyes of the Baluch and Sindhis, the US has a major share of the blame for the present crisis because US military hardware is being used to repress the Baluch insurgency, and a cornucopia of US economic aid to Islamabad since 11 September 2001 has kept Musharraf afloat. Military aid to Musharraf since 9/11, including the sale of 36 F-16s, recently approved by Congress, has totalled $900m so far, and another $600m is promised by 2009. Economic aid has not only included $3.6bn in US and US-sponsored multilateral aid but also the US-orchestrated postponement of $13.5bn in overdue debt repayments to aid donors.
Instead of pressing Musharraf for a political settlement with the minorities, as some European Union officials have done, the Bush administration has said that its ethnic tensions are an “internal matter” for Pakistan itself to resolve. Human rights organisations have called for international pressure on Musharraf to pursue a settlement, and critics in the US argue that the diversion of US-equipped Pakistani forces from the Afghan frontier to Baluchistan undermines even the limited operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban that Musharraf is pursuing in response to US pressure. Until Bush’s departure, however, the US commitment to Musharraf is likely to remain firm, barring the outside possibility that he will step down in the face of growing domestic pressure and permit former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to participate in the presidential elections scheduled for next year.
Translations >> français — Contestation indépendantiste au Baloutchistan فارسى — پاکستان، درگيراقليت هايش

October 2006

More by Selig S Harrison
* Selig S Harrison is director of the Asia Centre for International Policy, Washington, and author of ‘In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch nationalism and Soviet Temptations’ (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, 1980)
(1) The Baluch speak an Iranian (Indo-European) language and are Sunni Muslims.
(2) Pakistan is made up of the provinces of Sind, Punjab, Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier province, plus the federal capital Islamabad, federally administered territories and Kashmir (claimed by India).

The Blackboard

Director: Samira Makhmalbaf

Script: Mohsen MakhmalbafSamira Makhmalbaf

Director of Photography: Ebrahim Ghafouri

Sound: Behrouz ShahamatMusic: Mohammad Reza DarvishiEdit: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

After the chemical bombing of Halabcheh in Iraq a number of Kurd refugee teachers seek for pupils who are willing to educate around the border as they carry their blackboards like Jesus’ crosses. One of them encounters a group of teenage smugglers and tries to convince them to educate as they carry their heavy backpacks full of smuggled stuff. The other teacher encounters a group of old and tired men, whom after years of migration are going to their own country to die there. But it seems that hunger and insecurity has not left and chance for the education of the generations.

The Blackboard (Script Outline)
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
(1999)

A dirt road in the heart of the mountains, day time:
Men with Kurdish costumes carrying blackboards on their backs appear from the turns and twists of the mountain road ahead. From the group, we hear a man who we’ll call “the first teacher” complaining to another teacher. He regrets becoming a teacher and having to spend the rest of his life wandering in vain, searching for students unwilling to study. A vague sound roars through the mountains. The teachers are worried. The sound is getting closer and closer. The teachers run and hide under the blackboards not to be seen by the helicopters passing over their heads. The sound of the helicopters moves away and the cry of the crows replaces it. One of the teachers, whom we’ll the second teacher, sticks his head out from the blackboard shelter and mimics the cry of the crows. The crows calm down and go away. The teacher stands up and camouflage their blackboards with mud. They continue their trail. After a while, the first and second teachers take another route and after they go a little farther, they too separate as the first teacher heads towards the villages while the second one aims at the heights hoping to find people among the shepherds who’d want to learn and would be willing to give the teacher a few loaves of bread to eat, in return of the lessons they receive.

Village road, an hour later:
The first teacher goes on to encounter an old man idling. The teacher asks him if he’d like to learn something. The old man answers by handing him a letter and asking him to read it to him. The letter is in Arabic and the Kurd teacher can’t read it, but the old man insists to know what the letter says. He tells the teacher that his son in a prisoner of war in Iraq and begs him to let him know of how his son is doing. The first teacher is finally forced to read the letter from his own imagination to give hope to the old man.


The villages, daytime:
The first teacher walks through the streets of the villages, singing and inviting the villagers, whom he hears but doesn’t see, to come take part in his class, but hears no response to his bid.

Mountain byway, (to Iran), daytime:
On his way, the second teacher sees teenage smugglers moving in a group. Asking around, he finds out that they go to Iraq everyday to bring smuggled goods back with them and thus live on the small profit they make this way. The second teacher asks them if they’d like to take part in his class, and they decline and prefer to be on the move. The second teacher suggests teaching them while walking with them. The teenagers refuse his offer and move on, but with the road being narrow, they have no alternative but to follow the teacher’s steps.

Mountain byway, (to Iraq), daytime:
Frustrated, the first teacher meets a group of old men who actually look more tired than he does. Each of them is carrying a package, and some are so old that they support themselves with the help of others. There is only one woman in this group, and she looks agitated and upset. The first teacher tries to persuade the group to let him teach them and asks in return to be fed by them, but the old men say they can’t feed themselves, much less someone else. In a corner, the teacher sees a sick old man, groaning of the pain his urinary bladder is causing him, preventing him from urinating. The first teacher offers to help him in any way he can, provided he is fed, and the old man says, “Tell me what I should do so I can urinate.” The other old men ask the teacher if he knows the way to the border, and offer to feed him if he takes them there. The first teacher accepts and joins the group. A minute later, the blackboard on the teacher’s back changes to a stretcher to carry the sick old man, with the first teacher one of the men supporting it. Meanwhile, the teacher is curious about the disturbed woman and asks around about her. He is told that the woman has been widowed and the child with her is from her late husband. He is suggested to marry her, if he really thinks himself so noble. They say that the blackboard he carries on his back is enough of a gift to offer to his bride.
Someone in the group helps the first teacher and the woman with their vows, and in its most primal from, pronounces them man and wife. The blackboard acts to separate the bridal chamber while the old man is helping her kid urinate.

The summit, same time:
The teenage smugglers learn on their bags and rest. The second teacher has found someone among them who is interested in learning how to write his own name, Ribvar.

A lake in a deep valley, same time:
The woman is busy washing her young child’s clothing. The old man groans of agony and prays to God to take his life and spare him the pain. The first teacher arranges his blackboard and the bigger rocks in the form of a chamber. The old man who urinted the couple tricks the kid into following him, leaving the couple with a chance to enjoy their privacy.
The first teacher and the woman are now alone in their chamber. The teacher looks at his wife for a while, he then takes a piece of chalk and in Kurdish, writes “I love you” on the blackboard. To teach this phrase to his wife, he spells the words for her.
The old men who initially started a game with walnuts to amuse the child are now absorbed in the game and forget all about the kid. The kid goes to the chamber and the mother uses the kid as an excuse to run out of the chamber. This shows that the woman doesn’t want her husband.
Some of the old men try to help the old man who was in pain by throwing him into the cold water of the river and splashing water on him. The old man trembles from the cold, but still cannot urinate. A fire is lit up and the old men stand around it to get warm. One old man suggests: “Even the devil would have urinated in that cold water. This man must be more evil than the devil himself.”

The stone summit, the byways, a little later:
The second teacher is training Ribvar on how to write his name. The teenager who is the leader of the group shows up and yells, “the soldiers are coming.” Everyone runs, and the teacher runs along. As the teenagers get far enough to feel safe again, the second teacher who has a blackboard on his back spells Ribvar’s name for him again. Ribvar, who is bending because of the load he carries, heads towards the blackboard on the second teacher’s back and learn to spell his name. Suddenly, a cry is heard as a teenager falls in the canyon. Minutes later, the second teacher’s blackboard is broken with the teenagers’ axes; to be used in a cast on the teenager’s broken leg. The teenagers, still scared, separate into groups to meet each other at a farther point in their path.

The fogged summit, same time:
The old men keep on going. They’re exhausted. The first teacher walks ahead of them with the blackboard on his back. The woman follows him, and the kid walks along while holding the mother’s sleeve. At a point in their path, the kid sees a rabbit running by, goes after it, and gets lost. The woman changes direction to follow her child and the teacher goes after her. The old men are now far away, and the first teacher, the woman, and the child are left by themselves. The teacher lays his blackboard on the ground and once again starts teaching the phrase “I love you”. The woman is sitting on the ground, feeding her child, and ignoring him. The lack of attention from the woman makes the teacher more and more angry; continuously grades her and gives her lower grades each time, as though intending to fail her. He ends up leaving her and walking away, but then he hears the voice of the woman who is running after him; he stops, and turns back. After getting close enough, the woman stretches her arms towards his neck only to take her child’s pants, which she had hanged on the blackboard to dry. She then hung back to the direction she came from.

The cattle route, same time:
The second teacher goes on to teach. Suddenly Ribvar and three others accompanying him throw themselves on the ground and come back crawling. After a moment, we find out that the teenagers are hiding in-between the passing cattle to escape the eyes of the guards on the border. The second teacher, with a blackboard on his back, looks like a shepherd in the herd. The teacher and the sheep pass the guards on the border. An hour later, it is time for the young girls to milk the herd. The thirsty teacher puts his hand in the way of the milk pouring into the bucket and drinks some milk from the sheep. The blackboard is leaning against the back of the second teacher and Ribvar is practicing to write his name. When he finally succeeds in writing the word “Ribvar” like the teacher had on the same blackboard, he cries of happiness “I did it, I did it, I actually wrote my name!” and is instantly killed with a bullet that roars into the air. The other teenagers run toward the mountains, but with the sound of each bullet, we see one of them fall and roll on the ground in the middle of the fleeing sheep.

A mountain close to the Iraqi Kurdistan border, same time:
The old men, scared by the sound of shooting, run and hide behind the nearest rocks. The woman who fears chemical bombing hides under the first teacher’s blackboard and pours gravel in the front of the blackboard to stop chemical bombs, while hugging her young child very hard. The old man, who tried everything but couldn’t urinate, sits in some corner and urinates in his pants. Scared, he too takes refuge under the blackboard. A moment later, they all crawl away and the woman drags her child under her while howling of fear of the chemical bombardment that would follow. The first teacher, who is holding the blackboard as a shield on top of the woman and her child’s head, tries to calm her down, hoping to reduce her fear.



The border, the last hours of day:
The group of old men with the first teacher, the woman, the child, and the old man, who couldn’t urinate, reach the border. The wind is blowing and there is fog around them. The first teacher shouts, “we’re there”. This is your home. At first, no one believes him, but they finally accept and fall down to the ground to pray God. To pay respect, they take their shoes off before crossing the borderline.
At the last moment, the man who had married the teacher and the woman comes to the teacher and convinces him to divorce her. He explains that the woman’s heart is with her dead husband, so the first teacher accepts and their divorce is pronounced. The blackboard that had been offered as a gift is put on the woman’s back while she walks away.
As the woman crosses the fogged border, one can see the words “I love you”, Which the woman never seemed to learn, on the blackboard on her back.

The Girl from Paris (2002)

SYNOPSIS

The deeply expressive, down-to-earth Mathilde Seigner stars in this beautiful, scenic film as Sandrine, a 30-year-old woman who has decided to give up her career as a computer engineer in Paris to be an agriculturist. She returns to school, which is half textbook work and half hands-on farming experience . Soon after, she buys a farm in the Rhône-Alps region of France, a rugged mountainous area where the springtime views and clear air are the payoff for the intense isolated winters. There's only one hitch in Sandrine's plan: the cold and curmudgeonly former owner, Adrien (Michel Serrault), will live on the property for an additional 18 months before leaving the farm to retire. As Sandrine learns to run her new farm, coming up with business innovations of which Adrien could never have dreamed, he looks on in silent admiration but keeps his door shut to her. Finally, the two learn to communicate, teaching each other some valuable lessons. This understated film, which makes the French Alps look like paradise, shows two very lonely sides of life: Sandrine's as a young single woman who has not yet found a companion, and Adrien's as a man in his last years of life whose wife has already passed on.

The interview ofthe actress Mathilde Seigner , appeared in Telegraph (U.K)

Baby, you can drive my tractor

By Sheila Johnston
Published: 21 Jul 2002


This is the tale of two actress sisters. One, blonde, beautiful, a former model, is married to one of the world's leading directors and plays starring roles in his films. The other, brunette, is a little plainer and heavier set, but has the same sleepy almond eyes and striking, strong-boned features. Over the last few months, Emmanuelle Seigner, the blonde, has floated exquisitely up the steps of the Palais in Cannes on the arm of her husband, Roman Polanski. Meanwhile the brunette, Mathilde, has appeared as a sluttish, child-battering single mother in last month's Betty Fisher and as a trainee farmer in The Girl from Paris slaughtering a pig while whisking its blood in a bucket.

This modest film was last year's surprise sleeper hit in France, making Seigner, at 34, one of the country's most sought-after actresses. She plays a city slicker who moves to a beautiful but lonely part of the High Alps where she is hindered then reluctantly aided by the crotchety old peasant (Michel Serrault) who sells her his farm, then sticks around to watch her make a hash of it. At first she successfully uses her computing skills to market the place on the Internet as a holiday gite. But she finds survival tougher when the winter snows arrive.





We meet in a hotel in Saint Germain, the smart Rive Gauche district where Seigner grew up and still lives. The hotel brasserie is dim, elegant in a slightly threadbare way and almost empty except for a waiter flapping anxiously over a trolley of over-priced morsels. Then late and without apology, a languid figure heaves into view wearing what looks like a random assembly of chain-store tat: loose black T-shirt and culottes, clumpy brown sandals, various bits of costume jewellery, sunglasses thrust back on the top of her head. Seigner says proudly that she has a "personal stylist" but adds "I don't like complicated things in fashion. I just take the first thing that comes to hand each morning. It's a drag dressing up. Women who do that have time to waste."

She plops down lazily on a sofa, legs apart, elbows akimbo, and, in between spoonfuls of terrine washed down with Diet Coke, talks in staccato bursts punctuated with all the sighs, snorts, shrugs and moues that the French use to express that very Gallic attitude known as je m'en foutisme: the state of not caring less. Her voice is unexpectedly deep and her laugh (which is rare) throaty. While courteous, she makes no effort to project a glimmer of star quality.

"The script wasn't brilliant, but it held together," she states baldly of The Girl From Paris. "And I liked the idea of a girl who follows her dream through right to the end. The pig-killing scene wasn't my favourite. I was in a hurry to get it over. It disgusted me. But I did it."

She was unsurprised by the film's success: "I knew. I can sense what the public likes." This is said with some justification: Seigner's other recent roles, as a cynical beautician who boasts of "sex-ray vision" in Venus Institute, and as the tart-tongued wife of a man stalked by a creepy childhood friend in Harry He's Here to Help, were also both in small films by unknown directors which became big commercial hits.

The director, Christian Carion, says he cast Seigner for her "charm and sensuality", her ability to hold her own opposite Serrault, a veteran scene-stealer, and because she was one of the few actresses who would not look ridiculous behind the wheel of a tractor. "I didn't want a girl who was drop-dead gorgeous, but someone with character," he adds.

Seigner shrugs off the tasks she is called upon to perform (they also include driving a combine harvester, wielding a chainsaw and delivering two baby goats). "I did them more by instinct than through working at them. A role is a role. I don't intellectualise. I invest myself in it, but in the end je m'en fous, it's a game. I don't ask myself too many questions. I went into acting because I didn't feel like studying. I thought this was a job where I wouldn't have to work too hard. And I didn't know how to do anything much else."

At 23, she started out a little late for the nymphet roles and was, in any case, too chunky. Hardly sylph-like today, she used to be over a stone and a half heavier, until asked to lose weight for a role in 1999. "It wasn't much fun. It took will-power. But directors see me differently now." Does she consider herself beautiful? "Sometimes yes, sometimes, no, like everyone else. Actually I don't really care; it's not an obsession. Superficial things don't interest me.

'Some actresses, like Monica Bellucci, really play on that, they need that glamorous image. But not me. What counts is the credibility of the characters, especially since I play a lot of working women. What I like is when people tell me that they believe in me as a farmer, as a beautician, as a police officer. There's something very earthy about me. I'm true and simple in my acting style."

She never worried about competing with her gorgeous big sister. "Emmanuelle hasn't followed the same road at all as me. She does American films, speaks very good English, is much better known internationally. I didn't want to follow her. She had her way and I have mine." Mathilde speaks no English. "I can't be bothered to learn it. I like France, you know. I've no desire to make films anywhere else."

They live close by and visit each other often, she says. But asked, for instance, if she has seen The Pianist, Polanski's Golden Palm winning film about a musician who survived the Polish ghetto, she replies vaguely, "I know that people find it very beautiful and very interesting. It's about the Jews, all that, non? It's about him, isn't it?"

What did the family think of her sister's choice of partner? "Nothing much surprises me, and my parents are very tolerant. And if she's in love, eh bien, they respect that; there's nothing to discuss."

Mathilde's own private life is on hold after she split up with her boyfriend of three years, the comedian Laurent Gerra, last autumn. Immediately after the split, she dropped coy hints that it was because of her desire for a baby. "It's mainly a question of time. You need time to be with someone. Me, I don't have the time," she says now briskly.

Seigner is, indeed, in a hurry. She has made over 20 films in 10 years, squeezing in three assignments while The Girl For Paris went on hold for five months between its summer and winter shoots. She is currently on tour in a production of Educating Rita.

As she gets up to be photographed, the brasserie's sole other client, a man who has been desperately trying to catch her eye for the last half-hour, pounces to introduce himself. Seigner looks up at him with her bedroom eyes and treats him to one of her fabulous smiles. At that moment, and when she switches on briefly for the camera, the charm and sensuality which Carion saw in her are finally on high beam

Review Summary

Can a thirtysomething gal from the city find happiness with a goat farm and its aging overseer? Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) is a computer expert who has successfully pursued a career in business; however, her career path was chosen to please her family more than herself, and Sandrine has decided to move away from the fast pace of city life to rural France. Hoping to put her job skills to work in a new context, Sandrine begins studying agriculture, and arranges to buy a goat farm from Adrien (Michel Serrault), an elderly farmer who is nearing retirement. Adrien will spend another year and a half at the farm in order to insure a smooth transition to Sandrine's management, but his attitude toward her speaks less of gratitude than resentment; he isn't eager to show her the workings of the farm he helped to build, and his behavior is more than a bit hostile. Using her computer skills, Sandrine creates a website that generates a whole new market for the goat cheese and fruit preserves the farm generates, which helps her win Adrien's grudging respect, and when Adrien falls ill and it looks possible he may not live out his final stay on the farm, he begins to open up to her, sharing all he knows about the farm, and a new level of admiration and trust grows between them. Une Hirondelle a Fait Le Printemps was the first feature film from writer and director Christian Carion. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Movie Details
Title: The Girl From Paris
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Status: Released
Country: France, Belgium
Genre: Drama, Foreign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCwJykPDU1Y

Sorry,we didn't get a video subtitled in English.

The Grocer's Son

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLG-Ou0TcDA

It is summer, and thirty-year-old Antoine is forced to leave the city to return to his family in Provence. His father is sick, so he must assume the lifestyle he thought he had shed—driving the family grocery cart from hamlet to hamlet, delivering supplies to the few remaining inhabitants. Accompanied by Claire, a friend from Paris whom he has a secret crush on, Antoine gradually warms up to his experience in the country and his encounters with the villagers, who initially seem stubborn and gruff, but ultimately prove to be funny and endearing. Ultimately, this surprise French box-office hit is about the coming-of-age of a man re-discovering life and love in the countrysideIt is summer, and thirty-year-old Antoine is forced to leave the city to return to his family in Provence.

When his father (Daniel Duval) has a heart attack and is hospitalised, thirty-year-old Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) has to go back to the village in Provence helping his mother (Jeanne Goupil) and assume the lifestyle he thought he had shed, driving the family grocery cart from hamlet to hamlet, delivering supplies to the few remaining, mostly elderly inhabitants. Accompanied by Claire (Clotilde Hesme), a friend from Paris on whom he has a secret crush, Antoine resents being forced back to his father's orbit, and his brittle relationship with both his father and brother Francois (Stephan Guerin-Tillie) cause much conflict, while Francois has his own broken marriage to cope with. But gradually he warms up to his encounters with the villagers, while clumsily mishandling his budding relationship with Claire.

http://www.bigpondmovies.com/