Synopsis
Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
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Cast
- Brahim HadjadjAli La Pointe
- Jean MartinColonel Philippe Mathieu
- Saadi YacefEl-Hadi Jaffar
- Samia KerbashFathia
- Fouzia El KaderHalima
- Mohamed Ben KassenPetit Omar
- Tomasso NeriCaptain Dubois
- Noureddine BrahimiResponsable FLN
- Ugo PalettiCaptain
- Abderrahmane BrahimiLe Marié de la Casbah
Recommendations
- 100
Village Voice
A prototype of news-footage realism, the film makes shrewd use of handheld sloppiness, misjudged focus, overexposure, and you-are-there camera upset; the payoff is the scent of authentic panic. - 100
Christian Science Monitor
Like all masterpieces, it speaks to later ages as powerfully and intelligently as to its own. - 100
Los Angeles Times
Achieves its success through a combination of attitude and technique, uniting, to exceptional effect, a way of viewing the world morally while looking at it physically. - 100
Chicago Reader
It's one of the best movies about revolutionary and anticolonial activism ever made, convincing, balanced, passionate, and compulsively watchable as storytelling. - 91
Entertainment Weekly
Nearly four decades ago, Pontecorvo anatomized the very form of modern terrorist warfare: the hidden cells, the cultish leaders, the brutish cycle of attack and counterattack. - 90
New York Magazine (Vulture)
What reveals Pontecorvo as an artist, and not simply a propagandist of genius, is the sorrow he tries to stifle but that comes flooding through anyway--the sense that ALL sides in this conflict have lost their souls, and that all men are carrion. - 90
L.A. Weekly
A classic of politically engaged filmmaking, based on a book by Saadi Yacef, a former FLN leader who also produced the picture and played a version of himself. - 90
Washington Post
The greatness of The Battle of Algiers lies in its ability to embrace moral ambiguity without succumbing to it.
