Henry Dunant: Du rouge sur la croix (2006)

Algeria, [year unspecified]. As administrator of the Bourg-Thibourg bank in Haute Kabylie, Henry Dunant must deal with a revolt by settlers driven to hunger by a chronic drought. Though he comes from Geneva’s upper bourgeoisie, the young man is nevertheless open to social issues, outraged by the living conditions of the indigenous people and the pieds-noirs, and determined to ease their suffering by working to build a dam. To this end, he will have to plead his case before Napoleon III. On his way to Paris, Henry stops in Switzerland at the family home, where he learns that his elder brother Daniel is soon to marry Léonie Bourg-Thibourg, his employer’s daughter. At a celebration held on the occasion, Dunant collapses, struck by an attack of malaria. He is treated by his grandfather, the doctor Hubert, and by Hubert’s assistant, Cécile, whom he knew as a child and who has grown into a beautiful young woman. While convalescing, Henry is visited by his friend, the journalist Samuel Lowenthal, who tells him that the French emperor is not at the Tuileries but on the Italian battlefields, where he is fighting the troops of Francis Joseph I of Austria...