Surgeon during the Algerian War(2012)

Algeria in Flames(ar)

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. These war images taken in the Aurès-Nementchas are intended to be the basis of a dialogue between French and Algerians for peace in Algeria, by demonstrating the existence of an armed organization close to the people. Three versions of Algeria in Flames are produced: French, German and Arabic. From the end of the editing, the film circulates without any cuts throughout the world, except in France where the first screening takes place in the occupied Sorbonne in 1968. Certain images of the film have circulated and are found in films, in particular Algerian films. Because of the excitement caused by this film, he was forced to go into hiding for 25 months. After the declaration of independence, he founded the first Algerian Audiovisual Center.

Five Directors On The Battle of Algiers(en)

This 17-minute documentary is featured on the 3-Disc Criterion Collection DVD of The Battle of Algiers (1966), released in 2004. An in-depth look at the Battle of Algiers through the eyes of five established and accomplished filmmakers; Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, Julian Schnabel and Mira Nair. They discuss how the shots, cinematography, set design, sound and editing directly influenced their own work and how the film's sequences look incredibly realistic, despite the claim that everything in the film was staged .

De Gaulle, the Last King of France(fr)

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.

Intimate Enemies(fr)

A drama following a French platoon during Algeria's war of independence.

They Joined the Front(fr)

In this film, four key witnesses, who live in Algeria today, as full-fledged Agerians, show us what this colonization was really like, so "beneficial" that they themselves perceived it as the oppression of one people by another. Three of them, who today would be called "pieds noirs," in other words, those Europeans to whom France, the occupying power, gave the best land, taken from the indigenous populations, work, and exclusive rights, not shared by the entire population, lived rather well compared to the majority of the "natives." The fourth was far from all that and lived in Argentina. Annie Steiner, Felix Colozzi, Pierre Chaulet, and Roberto Muniz explain to us what led them to show solidarity with the struggle of the weak, the humiliated, and to risk their freedom and their lives by committing to liberate Algeria.

CHoosing at Twenty(fr)

Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Algerian war. These rebels, soldiers or conscripts were non-violent or anti-colonialists. Some took refuge in Switzerland where Swiss citizens came to their aid, while in France they were condemned as traitors to the country. In 1962, a few months after Independence, Villi Hermann went to a region devastated by war near the Algerian-Moroccan border, to help rebuild a school. In 2016 he returned to Algeria and reunited with his former students. He also met French refractories, now living in France or Switzerland.

Jamila, the Algerian(ar)

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

They Chose Algeria(fr)

Many of them participated in the struggle for Algerian independence. There are "those who believed in heaven", priests, Christians committed against torture, friends of the "natives", there are "those who did not believe in it", communist activists, students, progressive intellectuals, others remained in this country because they could not imagine living anywhere other than in this land of all passions. They are European and chose to stay in Algeria after independence, most of them opted for Algerian nationality. The film is another vision of the history of Algeria from the end of the fifties to the present day, told by these Europeans filmed at home, or in the context of their activities, illustrated by unpublished archive documents.

Sawt Echaâb(ar)

“La Voix du Peuple,” composed of archival photographs by René Vauthier and others, exposes the root causes of the armed conflict of the Algerian resistance. Participating in a war of real images against French colonial propaganda, these images aimed to show the images that the occupier had censored or distorted, by showing the extortions of the French occupation army: torture, arrests and arbitrary executions, napalm bombings, roundabout fires, erasing entire villages from the map, etc. This is what the French media described as a “pacification campaign”.

Far from Men(fr)

A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.

The Battle of Algiers(it)

Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.

Days of Glory(fr)

1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten…

A Captain's Honor(fr)

During a televised debate on the Algerian war in the early 1980s, Professor Paulet denounced the methods of Captain Caron, killed in action in 1957. The widow of the captain, Patricia, decided to file a defamation suit.

Quartiers sous tension(fr)

Lost Mountain(fr)

On November 1, 1954, the National Liberation Front of Algeria announced the war for the country's independence. France, colonizer since 1830, hastened to reinforce its military contingent in the four corners of the country and to prevent the advance of the rebels. A little Chaoui, born in a mountainous region of the country, sees his placid childhood collapse in the middle of a crossfire that he does not understand. The story, inspired by real testimonies, is constructed with images from the archives of the French army. From this apparently dissociated dialogue between image and word arises a sensitive homage to the memory that rests in the archives and to the ignored voice of its protagonists.

To Be Twenty in the Aures(fr)

A group of refractory and pacifist Bretons is sent to Algeria. These beings confronted with the horrors of war gradually become killing machines. One of them did not accept it and deserted, taking with him an FLN prisoner who was to be executed the next day.

Fadhma N'Soumer(ar)

This film, is about the courage and the determination of a young woman in djurdjur"as mountain in Algeria, fighting for her ancestor land during the earlier years of french occupation.

Dark Night, October 17, 1961(fr)

Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.

Chronicle of the Years of Fire(ar)

A meticulous chronicle of the evolution of the Algerian national movement from 1939 until the outbreak of the revolution on November 1, 1954, the film unequivocally demonstrates that the "Algerian War" is not an accident of history, but a slow process of suffering and warlike revolts, uninterrupted, from the start of colonization in 1830, until this "Red All Saints' Day" of November 1, 1954. At its center, Ahmed gradually awakens to political awareness against colonization, under the gaze of his son, a symbol of the new Algeria, and that of Miloud, half-mad haranguer, half-prophet, incarnation of Popular memory of the revolt, the liberation of Algeria and its people.

Our Algeria(ar)

"Djazaïrouna", produced by the cinema service of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), is a montage film intended to inform the international community at the UN in 1959 on the objectives pursued by the Algerian resistance during the war of 'Algeria. Independence in Algeria (1954-1962). In 1959, Djamel-Eddine Chanderli and Mohammed Lakdar-Hamina produced Djazaïrouna (Our Algeria) from images taken by René Vautier and Doctor Pierre Chaulet. This film, completed a little later and will result in the film “The Voice of the People”. This documentary on the history of Algeria through a montage of current events, traces the political and military actions of the A.L.N, the demonstrations of December 1960, and the attack on a fortified French base on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.