This iconic documentary-like war epic transports viewers into a watershed period of the French colonisation of Algeria. It won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion in 1966 and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Algiers, 1950s. A reconstruction of revolutionary events that occurred in the Algerian capital between 1954 and 1957, when Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) called for independence from France and began violent armed resistance in its battle to throw off the occupying power. The French responded by attempting to put down the insurrection using any means available, including systematic repression of the Arab population of Algiers, and assassination or capture of the FLN's membership. The film focuses mostly on two characters - Ali La Pointe, a petty criminal recruited by the FLN while serving prison sentence, and Colonel Mathieu, France's leading strategist who, by means of large-scale arrests and torture, begins a search for and elimination of the FLN leadership.
"The fight of the oppressed against colonialism interests me because it's one of the most difficult moments of the human condition. And because our entire civilization is constructed within this matrix. We draw all our strengths from the colonialized. And our manner of thinking and our culture are always shaped by this fact to a greater or lesser extent." (Gillo Pontecorvo)