Your email is not valid
Recipient's email is not valid
Your email has been sent.
No. 42: The Battle of Algiers
The immoralities of occupation
1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Making his beautiful and haunting film about the Algerian resistance to French colonial rule, Jewish-Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo—who fought the Fascists during World War II—opted for a nearly documentary aesthetic and used a cast comprised almost exclusively of non-actors. The result is a harrowing portrait of guerrilla warfare, the brutalities it inflicts on the civilian population, and the inherent immoralities of occupation. The film was banned in France upon release—and banned in Israel until recently—and was screened in the Pentagon shortly after the 2003 outbreak of the war in Iraq.
