I stumbled upon this movie by accident. It is apparently very famous.
La Battaglia di Algeri (1965) by Gillo Pontecorvo.
Amazing. Brilliant. Compassionate. This film really proclaims more than anything else I've seen the idea that there can be a right and a wrong side in a situation (and probably most people would agree that the Algerians kicking their French colonialists out of their country were definitely in the right) that you can hold that as true and at the same time recognize that unjustifiable atrocities were committed by both sides.
You gotta see this movie. If you're at all concerned about what's going on in Iraq, you gotta see this movie. Because this movie will show you more clearly than watching tonights newsbroadcast, what is happening in Iraq, you gotta see it. Rent the Criterion Collection and watch the interviews with five directors including Spike Lee and Oliver Stone talking about the importance of the film. It'll knock your socks off.
Apparently, it knocked the Pentagon's socks off. They had a special screening of the film a couple years ago as the Iraq war took off. According to an article in Slate and The Washington Post, the Defense Department held showings of the film for its employees to learn "strategy" and show "how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas" which totally misinterprets the film. If they thought this film showed how to "win the battle against terrorism" (if you follow the French example, it required the use of torture) I fear this world is in for a lot more of it.
This was one of the most famous revolutionary films of the 1960s. It was banned in France for four years. It was required viewing for the Black Panthers. Costa-Gavras' Z came out just a coupla years later. Any filmmaker who was at all politically or socially conscious in that era owed a huge debt to Pontecarvo.
"After 9/11 I wanted everyone to see this movie. I wanted everyone to see that grief has no nationality that the sadness of losing a child, losing a family member is something that's universal" -Julian Schnabel, director.
"Any time you're in someone else's land and they don't want you there and you weren't invited, I think you can look at this film and see what you're in store for" -Spike Lee
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