Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) is a film about the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial France in the 1950s. Shot in documentary style with a cast of non-professional actors, the film depicts the guerrila attacks of the National Liberation Front (FLN) against French settlers as well as the torture tactics employed by French paratroopers in response to the uprising.
The film centers on FLN leader Ali La Pointe, an illiterate laborer and boxer who becomes involved in the FLN following a stint in prison for running a street gambling table. Jafar, an FLN leader, inducts Ali into the group after first making sure that he isn't a spy. The FLN spreads its influence throughout the Casbah, the traditional Islamic quarter of Algiers, imposing a ban on vices and violently eliminating local opponents who stand in the way of the FLN. A series of simultaneous assassinations of police officers carried out by the FLN prompts French paratroopers to set up checkpoints around the Casbah. When a police chief covertly plants a bomb in a residential building in the Casbah, killing children and women, the FLN retaliates by killing settler civilians with three bombs that FLN members, disguised as secular women, plant in public places in the city. Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Mathieu, a French resistance leader in WWII, arrives in Algiers to quash the insurrection. His strategy involves capturing and torturing Arab Algerians to gain information that will bring him to the heads of the FLN. The last FLN leader he finds is Ali, who chooses death over surrender. The film ends with a sequence showing mass protests against French colonial rule in 1960 with women and young people at the forefront.
Depicting the guerrilla warfare that arose during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), The Battle of Algiers is considered among the most influential political films in history. The film was based on a memoir by FLN veteran Saadi Yacef, who played Jafar in the film and wrote his memoir while imprisoned by the French. Pontecorvo's use of black-and-white newsreel-style footage has led some viewers to mistake the dramatization for a documentary. Pontecorvo's decision to cast non-professional Algerians in the film also contributes to this impression. Nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 1967 Academy Awards, The Battle of Algiers is associated with the Italian neorealist cinema movement of the postwar era.
