It is the year 1898 and the race between Britain and France for the conquest of Africa has been going on for two decades.
The two young captains Voulet and Chanoine are the commanders of a group of white african infantry men whose goal it is to claim territory between Niger and Chad.
At the same time the Dreyfuss-scandal arouses both nationalist anti-Semites and republicans in Paris. The encounter of the British and the French in African regions gets in the way of the extension of French Equatorial Africa.
The duties of the two captains become more and more limited. Despite the feeling that their superiors in Paris have left them on their own they stick to their course. Their troops march through Africa, looting, murdering and burning down everything. Their determination is to erstablish a “white empire” in the middle of the Dark Continent.
Alarmed by massacres and attacks, a company is finally dispatched to curb this horde. But the fanatism of the captains and their followers is unbreakable.
Based on true events Serge Morati and Yves Laurent tell in their movie one of the drakest chapters of French colonial history.
The film picks up an explosive topic, which became up to date in France by a controversial law which was passed early last year. According to the law, the histroy of the “French presence on other continents” shall be displayed mainly in a “postive view” at French schools and universities.
The film “mercenaries of hell” was shown out of competition on the FIPA festival in Biarritz 2005.