Unknown: Is the film with Benjamin Voisin faithful to the Camus novel?

Be careful, the next article shows an important element of the movie.

Watching François Ozon’s The Stranger, viewers familiar with Albert Camus’ novel will find a film faithful to the original work, respecting its essence, chronology of events and even some replicas.

However, the director chooses not to repeat the famous beginning of the work – “Mother died today“. Instead, he opts for a sharp and political sentence: “I killed an ArabIn his film, François Ozon puts the Arab’s presence at the center of the story, going so far as to introduce his sister, although not in the book.

The character, played by actress Hajar Bouzauit, exchanges a few words with Marie (Rebecca Marder) at the end of the trial. The director explains this important change to AlloCiné:

“To make a modern adaptation, I had to take into account all the elements that have happened since 1942, the year the book was published. There was the Algerian War, independence, and there are all the analyzes that have been done on the book, both philosophical and literary..”

“Hear the Arabic Voice”

François Ozon continues:It was impossible for me to ignore all this. It should be integrated into the film. So very quickly I needed to contextualize the story and develop the characters, especially the sister character, to get an Arabic voice..”

“Today, when we read the book, we are especially surprised by the invisibility of Arabiche adds. Obviously, when Camus wrote that in 1942, it was absolutely not a racist gesture. It’s more of a descriptive gesture. He calls her an Arab, as she calls him an Italian, as in the thriller code of the time. But today it was important to give the Arabs a name in history and then give them a voice.“

In the final sequence of the film, François Ozon even gives a name to the man who was simply called “the Arab” in the book: Musa Hamdan.

Comments collected by Thomas Desroches, Paris, October 9, 2025

Unknown, currently in theaters