The Last Men

The Japanese, who had conquered most of Asia in the early 1940s and attempted to establish an "eternal era of shared prosperity", were already slowly and bloodily retreating by the beginning of 1945. In March, to eliminate any risk of attack, Japanese troops launched a surprise, brutal attack on the previously tolerated Vichy French forces in Indochina. Survivors of the attack fled into the jungle in an attempt to reach China under a vague evacuation plan that no one believed. They formed a column that was later named Alessandri's Column after its commander. Of the 20,000 French soldiers in the Far East, barely 3,000 made it safety. Legionnaires from the isolated Khan Khaï camp, where alcoholics and other soldiers incapable of fighting were housed, were never able to catch up with Alessandri's column and join it. We still don't know who survived from the Khan Khaï detachment. His legend fueled the story for this film, the story of the "drunken column".