You editorial (The Guardian view on French cinema’s De Gaulle moment: present anxieties inform a new focus on the past, 5 August) informs us that some new French films covering the second world war are coming soon. Its focus suggested that most of these films will be of a “great men of history” kind. Whatever dilemmas faced leaders in this period, it was the grandparents and great-grandparents of the majority of cinemagoers who faced life-or-death choices and, in some cases, held the lives of their neighbours in their hands.From my research about members of my family and the areas where...