Irene Bignardi

At the local cinema, an audience watches a Spaghetti Western matinee. During the film's on-screen climactic duel, a bullet is fired into a patron. With no leads and a theater full of suspects, police investigators lock the doors, put everyone back in their seats, and run the movie again. But will this shot in the dark reveal the real killer?

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, we revisited our edit of the film and interviews with director Gillo Pontecorvo and producer Saadi Yacef, who discuss the process of representing Algeria's struggle for independence and the challenges of presenting a balanced view of the conflict.

Pontecorvo is one of those Italian filmmakers marked for life by neorealism. He declares that he decided to do cinema after leaving a screening of "Paisa" by Roberto Rossellini. The future filmmaker was then in Paris, a year after a war during which he became one of the main figures of the Italian resistance and one of the founders of the Youth Front. Leaving his status as a war hero behind him, Pontecorvo made his directorial debut with "Giovanna", a short film heralding a cinematic career dedicated to what he himself calls the "dictatorship of truth."