Composed of archive images narrated by the writer, anthropologist and linguist Mouloud Mammeri, the film offers a reflection on the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggle movements of the 1970s around the world.
Trailer
(Self) Narrator
A childhood episode comes back to the memory of a man with no land
The Second World War. French authorities ban political parties and unions. In Algeria, the leaders of political and trade union organizations were arrested and interned in "surveillance" camps with more than 2,000 French and foreigners: communist activists, trade unionists, brigadists, Spanish republicans and other opponents of the Vichy regime. The Djenien Bourezg camp is one of these camps, located in southern Algeria and is one of the most formidable. An old activist for the Algerian national cause returns to the scene. He blows away the ashes that cover this part of history. And through it, we discover the hard fight of the camp inmates for respect and human dignity, under a fascist command.
This documentary by director Claire Billet and historian Christophe Lafaye details the massive and systematic use of chemical weapons during the Algerian War. Algerian fighters and civilians, sheltering in caves, were gassed by "special weapons sections" of the French army. The gas identified on military documents is CN2D, whose widespread use forced insurgents to flee "treated" sites, at the risk of dying there. The method is reminiscent of the "enfumades" used by the French expeditionary force during the conquest of Algeria in the 19th century. Between 8,000 and 10,000 such operations are believed to have taken place on Algerian soil between 1956 and 1962. This historical aspect is little known due to the difficulty of accessing archives, many of which are still classified, raising questions about memory, historical truth, and justice.
Rabie is a kid from Sétif in 1980, trying to collect money to buy a wheelchair for his paralyzid sister Sassia, so she can get out of the house.
Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.
In Algeria in 1954, in a village in the Aurès region, poverty reigns over peasants enslaved by colonial administrators and Algerian landowners. Noua, in love with the son of a peasant dispossessed of his land, must be sold to a wealthy landowner.
A stubborn director who wants to rediscover the Algiers of his childhood comes up against the “Hollywood” fantasies of his characters, non-professionals all hoping to be able to become “someone else”, at least for the duration of a film… Mise en abyme for a journey into megalomania…
A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algeriann grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
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...
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.
In prison in colonial Algeria, shortly after the end of the Second World War, three indigenous cellmates make out. Once free, they attack the authority represented by the triad of the boss, the gendarme and the administrator. “Living the colonial condition,” confided Tewfik Farès, “is something! It’s not sociologically or historically speaking. It’s life. And I think that’s all there in it. [...] For a hundred and thirty years, we wait. We hold back. We push back. We hope. At the same time, on different occasions, there are skirmishes, unrest.
Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
This documentary offers a deep, candid, and historical look at the Christian experience of America's largest and best-known tribes: the Dakota and Lakota. Its exploration into Native American history also takes a hard and detailed look at President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy of 1873, which was, in effect, a "convert to Episcopalianism or starve" edict put forth by the American government in direct violation of its Constitution. The devastation it had on the values of the people affected were dramatic and extremely long-lasting. Grant's policy was finally ended over 100 years later by the Freedom of American Indian Religions Act in 1978. Interlaced with extraordinarily candid interviews, this documentary presents an insider's perspective of how the Dakota and Lakota were estranged from their religious beliefs and their long-standing traditions.
"Gerboise bleue", the first French atomic test carried out on February 13, 1960 in the Algerian Sahara, is the starting point of France's nuclear power. These are powerful radioactive aerial shots carried out in areas belonging to the French army. Underground tests will follow, even after the independence of Algeria. From 1960 to 1978, 30,000 people were exposed in the Sahara. The French army was recognized recognized nine irradiations. No complaint against the army or the Atomic Energy Commission has resulted. Three requests for a commission of inquiry were rejected by the National Defense Commission. For the first time, the last survivors bear witness to their fight for the recognition of their illnesses, and revealed to themselves in what conditions the shootings took place. The director goes to the zero point of "Gerboise Bleue", forbidden access for 47 years by the Algerian authorities
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.
In 1971, the Algerian government nationalized hydrocarbons. The consequences of this decision on the community of Algerians in France are numerous. The Galti family is prey to these economic problems. The father, Khaled, former member of the F.L.N. in France, does not escape the sentence. Sharazade, his wife and comrade in combat, finds herself torn between her role as wife, mother and nostalgia for a country and a bygone past. As for his son Karim, a victim of socio-cultural division, all he has left is refusal.
This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.
Two deaf and dumb children. She is the daughter of an American Oil engineer. He is the son of an Algerian farmer. They meet and manage to communicate, transcending all the cultural barriers that separate them.
Néfissa, a student in Algiers, returns to her village in the south in the summer. Her father wants her to marry the mayor but she wants to continue her studies. Confronting her father and the opinion of the villagers who do not understand her, she decides to flee to Algiers. The shepherd Rabah discovering her wounded and lost in the mountains, has her treated by her mother. In contact with Nefissa, Rabat becomes aware of his exploited condition and discovers the possibilities offered to him by the cooperatives of the agrarian revolution. The two young people will go through the decisive stage together which will allow them to escape obscurantism and exploitation. Based on the novel "Le vent du sud" by Abdelhamid Benahouga
Long live the strike! Lucie Baud, one of the pioneers of the women's movement, went with creativity, fighting spirit and the power of singing against the weapons of male-dominated capitalist society in nineteenth-century France. The film, based on true events, describes the ambitious fight of a silk moth. She stood up for the rights of the female working class to end maltreatment and oppression once and for all. For the revolution in women's rights, she even put her family back and fought to the end for their beliefs.
