"Thomas Sankara's worst nightmare..."
This film recounts the steps of Algerian communist revolutionary Rashid Al Masri and his personal war on Morocco and their president Buchra Abergel.
Social & External
The people behind it
Zak Blueoumba
Rashid Al Masri / Bryan Smith
Charlie Mahón
Buchra Abergel / Security Guard 1
Dorian O'Plumber
Secretary of State / Security Guard 2
Joseph Stalin
as self (Archive footage)
Algeria, summer 1962, eight hundred thousand French people left their native land in a tragic exodus. But 200,000 of them decided to attempt the adventure of independent Algeria. Over the following decades, political developments would push many of these pieds-noirs into exile towards France. But some never left. Germaine, Adrien, Cécile, Guy, Jean-Paul, Marie-France, Denis and Félix, Algerians of European origin, are among them. Some have Algerian nationality, others do not. Some speak Arabic, others do not. They are the last witnesses to the little-known history of these Europeans who remained out of loyalty to an ideal, a taste for adventure and an unconditional love for a land where they were born, despite all the ups and downs that the free Algeria in full construction had to go through.
In 1895, young journalist Albertine Auclair arrives in the Kabylie during a family visit. The beauty of the region seduces her but she soon learns of the struggles of the native Algerians. She hears in particular about Arezki El Bachir, who was recently sentenced to death by the colonial justice system, and decides to find out more about this extraordinary man.
Emilie Busquant, a woman with an exceptional destiny, was born on March 3, 1901, in Neuves-Maisons, Lorraine. In 1923, she moved to Paris to find work and met Messali Hadj, who had also come seeking employment. A beautiful love story began; she fell in love with both a man and a cause: the independence of Algeria. Together, in 1926, they founded the first Algerian independence party, the North African Star (Étoile Nord-Africaine). She would support the Algerian people's struggle throughout her life.
The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led a rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of president Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century.
This film presents the point of view of an Arab from Algeria who rebels against colonization. He analyzes the process of awareness, the transition to revolt, to armed insurrection. Algeria and the settlers are seen through this lens and not the way a Frenchman saw the country. He gives voice to the Arabs at a time when this word was not heard: sometimes it was not even produced, at least publicly. The testimonies are based on real propositions, most of them were made to the author during his stay in Algeria from 1948 to 1956, then in 1958 and 1959. The comments are borrowed from the texts of Arab theorists of the revolution Algerian. This film thus completely evacuates the point of view of those who are not insurgents; he does not give the opinion of the colonists. It is the direct expression of what was the revolt of a colonized person: it thus constitutes the very type of the historical document.
Documentary series in two parts: 1. A people without a voice (80'), 2. A land in mourning (78'). Part 1: A people without a voice: October 88, the Algerian Republic is faltering, the film goes back to the sources of this tragedy and explains how the face to face between the Islamists and those in power began. The interruption of the legislative elections of December 91, followed shortly after the assassination of President Boudiaf in June 92, plunged Algeria into chaos. Part 2: A land in mourning: the cycle of violence that leads to massacres and the economic and geopolitical underside of the war. More than 100,000 deaths, an incredible degree of barbarity, massacres, apparently incomprehensible... Behind the official window of power and its artificial political scene, hides a shadow power.
In 1960, nine-year-old Bachir dreamed of becoming the son of a martyr because he had heard that the children of martyrs would obtain everything after independence. He sets up a whole plan to get rid of a certain François, enemy of his country, while his father, Saddek, abandoned him with his mother and brothers. Through this fiction, the film looks at the life and visions of little Algerians during the War of National Liberation. Karim Traïdia looks back on his own childhood during the Algerian war (1945-1962). On a humorous note, it tells the adventures of a young child and his innocent friends against the backdrop of a raging merciless war.
Albert Camus died at 46 years old on January 4, 1960, two years after his Nobel Prize in literature. Author of “L'Etranger”, one of the most widely read novels in the world, philosopher of the absurd and of revolt, resistant, journalist, playwright, Albert Camus had an extraordinary destiny. Child of the poor districts of Algiers, tuberculosis patient, orphan of father, son of an illiterate and deaf mother, he tore himself away from his condition thanks to his teacher. French from Algeria, he never ceased to fight for equality with the Arabs and the Kabyle, while fearing the Independence of the FLN. Founded on restored and colorized archives, and first-hand accounts, this documentary attempts to paint the portrait of Camus as he was.
The movie will chart Cole’s journey as musician and quiet revolutionary, navigating racial injustice, Hollywood sabotage and self doubt to ensure his legacy and help pave the way for future generations of artists and Black men and women.
After enduring 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, Jean Valjean emerges a hardened man. He seeks redemption by reinventing himself as a respected dignitary under a new identity. He promises Fantine, a dying factory worker, to rescue and protect her daughter Cosette, who is being exploited and mistreated by the deceitful Thénardier family. As Valjean raises Cosette as his own, he is relentlessly pursued by Inspector Javert. Admist the social unrest shaking France, the fates of Valjean, Cosette, her lover Marius, and Javert become intertwined in a turbulent, revolutionary Paris. Through struggles, sacrifices, and a deep yearning for justice, Valjean strives to complete his journey of redemption and offer Cosette a future of love and freedom.
1962, at the end of the Algerian War, Algerian independence activists are released from Rennes prison. For one night, filmmaker Yann Le Masson films them. They tell him their vision for the future of Algeria and the place women must occupy in the new society to be built. Fifty years later, with the soundtrack missing, Raphaël Pillosio sets out to find these women. Two deaf people set about lip-reading the women filmed by Yann Le Masson, revealing snatches of sentences, words cut short by the camera's shifts. An investigative film in which the few activists still alive discover their old testimonies and tell us their silent story. The reconstruction of the lost soundtrack will remain in suspense; no happy ending will come to absorb the absence, to cancel the ferocious operation of time. An essay film about cinema that depicts their disappearance, and forever keeps them alive.
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.
Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.
In 1994, at over seventy years old, Gilberte and William Sportisse, threatened by the FIS, arrived from Algeria. Of Jewish faith, he of Arabic mother tongue, they formed a fighting couple, started for the independence of Algeria, always with an unshakeable faith in humanity. They enjoy recounting the participation of Algerian Jews in the Second World War and the struggle for Algerian independence. They provide us with previously unpublished information on the public and clandestine struggles of the Algerian Communist Party before and after independence, and on the repression of activists who, like William and Gilberte Sportisse, were tortured and imprisoned after Colonel Boumédiène came to power. The film is an ode to understanding between people of different origins or cultures and a tribute to a couple whose youthful character and enthusiasm still astonish.
A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely Muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence, the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions.
1953, colonized Algeria. Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.
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.
In 1964, Algeria, just two years after the end of the war of independence, found itself catapulted into new contradictions, a still rural territory which responded to the modernity brought by the revolution. Filmed during the winter of 1964-1965 by the young director Ennio Lorenzini, it is the first international Algerian production which paints a rare portrait in color of a multifaceted nation, far from the simplistic vision created by the press and the French army. Produced by Casbah Film, Les Mains Libres (initially titled Tronc De Figuier) bears witness to the stigmata of colonization and the future of free Algeria throughout the Algerian territory and reveals the richness of its landscapes and the diversity of its traditions . The documentary, using the aesthetics of militant cinema of the time, is made up of four scenes: Sea and Desert, The Struggle, The Earth, Freedom.
This documentary bears witness to the events that took place more than thirty years before the filming of this movie, on October 17, 1961, in Paris, during the Algerian War. It is a work not only about historical truth but also about memory. Constructed primarily from interviews conducted with those involved in the events, along with archival footage, photographs, and radio broadcasts from the time, our investigation proves that nearly 200 Algerians were killed (drowned, tortured) that night and in the days that followed by the French police. "A Missing Day" seeks to ask two key questions: how could such events have unfolded in the capital of a Western democracy barely thirty years ago? And why have they been silenced ever since?
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.
In post-World War II America, a woman, rebuilding her life in the suburbs with her husband, kidnaps her neighbor and seeks vengeance for the heinous war crimes she believes he committed against her.
Resistance leader Omar Mukhtar opposes Italian colonization before World War II. The brutal guerrilla war against Italian General Rodolfo Graziani and the Fascist forces of Benito Mussolini highlights the struggle for Libyan independence and the harsh tactics utilised by the colonisers.
In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.
Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.
A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
In this sprawling, fictionalized history of the Black Panthers, 1960s Oakland becomes a war zone as the Panthers battle for the right to exist.
A look at the history of the American comedy publication and production company, National Lampoon, from its beginning in the 1970s to 2010, featuring rare and never before seen footage, this is the mind boggling story of The National Lampoon from its subversive and electrifying beginnings, to rebirth as an unlikely Hollywood heavyweight, and beyond. A humour empire like no other, the impact of the magazines irreverent, often shocking, sensibility was nothing short of seismic: this is an institution whose (drunk stoned brilliant) alumni left their fingerprints all over popular culture. Both insanely great and breathtakingly innovative, The National Lampoon created the foundation of modern comic sensibility by setting the bar in comedy impossibly high.
The story of Vera Atkins, a crafty spy recruiter, and two of the first women she selects for Churchill's "secret army": Virginia Hall, a daring American undaunted by a disability and Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist. These civilian women form an unlikely sisterhood while entangled in dangerous missions to turn the tide of the war.
In civil rights era Montgomery, Alabama, Klansman's grandson Bob Zellner must choose which side of history to be on during the Movement. Defying his family and white Southern norms, he fought against social injustice, repression and violence to change the world around him
An amateur historian defies the academic establishment in her efforts to find King Richard III's remains, which were lost for over 500 years.
After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.
A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.
At the turn of the 19th century, Pugilism was the sport of kings and a gifted young boxer fought his way to becoming champion of England.
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
An epic that details the checkered rise and fall of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his wife, Josephine.
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly incompetent friends, turns out to be the real thing and hurls him and his imbecile underling, Baldrick, through the course of human history.
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
During the Napoleonic Wars, when the French have occupied Spain, some Spanish guerrilla soldiers are going to move a big cannon across Spain in order to help the British defeat the French. A British officer is there to accompany the Spanish and along the way, he falls in love with the leader's girl.
A defiant warrior-monk arrives at Kublai Khan's court in chains and soon earns his tragic nickname in this 30-minute origin story.