The Battle of Algiers (French: La Bataille d'Alger) is a 1966 Academy Award nominated war film based on events during the Algerian War (1954--62) against French colonial occupation in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers.

It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. The film has been critically celebrated and often taken, by insurgent groups and states alike, as an important commentary on urban guerilla warfare. It occupies the 120th place on Empire Magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

Algeria was eventually liberated from the French, but Pontecorvo relegates that to an epilogue. He concentrates instead on the years between 1954 and 1957 when the freedom fighters regrouped and expanded into the casbah, only to face a systematic attempt by French paratroopers to wipe them out. His highly dramatic film is about the organisation of a guerrilla movement and the methods used to annihilate it by the colonial power.

Subject:

The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the events that occurred in the capital city of French Algeria between November 1954 and December 1960, during the Algerian War of Independence.

The narrative begins with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah. Then civil war between native Algerians and European settlers (pied-noirs) in which the sides exchange acts of increasing violence, leading to the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt the National Liberation Front (FLN).

The paratroopers are depicted as winning the battle by neutralizing the whole of the FLN leadership either through assassination or through capture. However, the film ends with a coda depicting demonstrations and rioting for independence by native Algerians, suggesting that although France won the Battle of Algiers, she lost the Algerian War. (Independence was finally gained in 1962.)

Screenplay:

The Battle of Algiers was inspired by Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger, by Saadi Yacef, the campaign account of an FLN military commander. The book, written by Yacef, while a prisoner of the French, was FLN morale-boosting propaganda for militants.

After independence, Yacef was released and became part of the new government. The Algerian government backed a film of Yacef's memoir; exiled FLN man Salash Baazi approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project.

Critical Acclaim:

Pontecorvo resisted any temptation to romanticise the protagonists. The atrocities committed by the French and the terrorist strikes of the FLN are both portrayed. The film's essential fair-mindedness is perhaps its most striking and skillful feature.

It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for three Academy Awards (in non-consecutive years) including Best Screenplay (Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas) and Best Director (Gillo Pontecorvo) in 1969 and Best Foreign Language Film in 1967.

Political Controversies in the 1960's:

The film produced considerable political controversy in France and was banned there for five years. The sympathetic treatment of the FLN in The Battle of Algiers often dismayed former French colonists of Algiers (the pieds-noirs) and French army troops.

The Battle of Algiers and Guerilla Movements:

The release of The Battle of Algiers coincided with the decolonization period and national liberation wars, as well as a rising tide of left-wing radicalism in Western nations in which a large minority showed interest in armed struggle.

Israeli Screening during the First Intifada:

The film was banned in Israel for many years. It was shown for several months at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the First Intifada and aroused considerable interest and public attention.

2003 Pentagon Screening;

In 2003, the film again made the news after the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The Pentagon offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq.