Yacef Saâdi

Cheikh Djemaï looks back on the genesis of Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature film, The Battle of Algiers (1965). Through archive images, extracts from the film and interviews with personalities, the filmmaker retraces the journey of a major work - from the events of the Algiers Casbah (1956-1957) to the presentation of the Lion of 'Or causing the anger of the French delegation in Venice - which left its mark as much in the history of cinema as in that of Algeria.

More than fifty years after the release of the film “The Battle of Algiers” in theaters in June 1966, director Salim Aggar found, after a search which lasted more than a year and a half, the actors, extras and technicians who worked on the film directed by Gillo Pentecorvo and produced by Yacef Saadi. In this documentary full of anecdotes and stories about the filming of the film, the director found the actress who played the role of Hassiba Ben Bouali, the young 17-year-old actress who played Bouhamidi's bride but especially certain figures important parts of the film who were barely 10 years old at the time of filming and who no one will recognize today. Beyond the important historical aspect of the film, the documentary focused mainly on the social, cinematographic and cultural aspect of the film and its impact on a generation which had just regained independence.

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.

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.

Made just three years after the end of the French-Algerian War (1954-1962), Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle Of Algiers instantly ignited discussions of this complex historical period. Using the film as a point of reference, this 2004 documentary attempts to reconstruct the Algerian experience of the battle for independence.

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."

Former petty criminal Ali la Pointe becomes a commander of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directing a guerilla insurgency against the colonial French occupation. Paratrooper commander Colonel Phillippe Mathieu, a veteran of World War II and the First Indochina War, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings.