Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Gillo Pontecorvo
Cast
Brahim Hadjadj,
Jean Martin,
Yacef Saadi,
Ugo Paletti,
Fusia El Kader,
Samia Kerbash
Genre
Drama,
History,
War
The story of the struggle for Algeria’s freedom from French colonial rule by the Front de Liberation Nationale. Told in part from the perspective of revolutionary fighter Ali la Pointe, the film depicts the rebels’ efforts, as well as the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
This film continues to be controversial in France precisely because it is such a well-executed interpretation of the events of the Battle of Algiers, even if the film smooths out some sharp corners of this history. Many actors in the film are revolutionaries playing themselves, which makes it all the more impactful. Definitely worth a watch or two within the canon of cinematic classics.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's one of the best movies about revolutionary and anticolonial activism ever made, convincing, balanced, passionate, and compulsively watchable as storytelling.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
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.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Like all masterpieces, it speaks to later ages as powerfully and intelligently as to its own.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
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.
Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
The greatness of The Battle of Algiers lies in its ability to embrace moral ambiguity without succumbing to it.
L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor
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.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
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.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
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.
TV Guide Magazine
What makes the movie's power creditable is Pontecorvo's ability to present combatants on both sides as multidimensional, nonheroic human beings, even though it's obvious where the director's own sentiments lie. (Review of original release)
Variety
It's a dedicated effort with importance as a 'document.' (Review of original release)
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