A Captain's Honor

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

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.

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Jacques Mesrine, a loyal son and dedicated soldier, is back home and living with his parents after serving in the Algerian War. Soon he is seduced by the neon glamour of sixties Paris and the easy money it presents. Mentored by Guido, Mesrine turns his back on middle class law-abiding and soon moves swiftly up the criminal ladder.

A drama following a French platoon during Algeria's war of independence.

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. These war images taken in the Aurès-Nementchas are intended to be the basis of a dialogue between French and Algerians for peace in Algeria, by demonstrating the existence of an armed organization close to the people. Three versions of Algeria in Flames are produced: French, German and Arabic. From the end of the editing, the film circulates without any cuts throughout the world, except in France where the first screening takes place in the occupied Sorbonne in 1968. Certain images of the film have circulated and are found in films, in particular Algerian films. Because of the excitement caused by this film, he was forced to go into hiding for 25 months. After the declaration of independence, he founded the first Algerian Audiovisual Center.

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.

The Oath, a TV film produced by Algerian television in 1963 following the end of the war of independence, tells the story of young Algerians who joined the resistance after the bloody repressions of May 1945 in Constantinois by the French colonial army .

May 8, 1945, the day of victory over Nazism, is also a day of mourning. In Algiers, thanks to demonstrations for victory, the Algerian flag appears for the first time, thus claiming independence. But in Sétif, the standard bearer is shot dead at the head of the procession and a riot breaks out. The colonial massacre that followed would extend to all of Constantine. The commission of inquiry never delivered its conclusions and an amnesty law erased the traces of this savage repression. Fifty years later, the file is open.

Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist from Martinique, has just been appointed head of department at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. His methods contrast with those of the other doctors in a context of colonization. A biopic in the heart of the Algerian war where a fight is waged in the name of Humanity.

Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.

Chants d’Automne (Song of Autumn), is a story of daily life on a colonial farm, at the start of the war of liberation in Algeria, describing individual and group behavior in this context. An unthinkable, even dangerous, romantic relationship, born in this context between Catherine, daughter of a settler, and Abdelmalek, son of a blacksmith. Managing his vast property in a feudal manner, Monsieur Marcel whose only ambition is his personal enrichment to the detriment of the community. Everyone fears his authority except his daughter Catherine, a student in France, who returns home during the holidays. She does not stop herself from expressing to him her ideas of justice which go against family and colonial practices. Catherine and Abdelmalek's romance makes relationships increasingly strained, but the call for freedom will be stronger than a woman's love.

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.

A group of refractory and pacifist Bretons is sent to Algeria. These beings confronted with the horrors of war gradually become killing machines. One of them did not accept it and deserted, taking with him an FLN prisoner who was to be executed the next day.

This film retraces the combat journey of Krim Belkacem, one of the leading figures of the Algerian War. When he left the Dellys barracks in October 1945, the day after the Second World War, Krim Belkacem was 23 years old. He is a man revolted by the May massacres in Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata and several other localities in the ravaged country. But it is also and above all a young Algerian who questions the future of Algeria. On March 21, 1947, Krim at the age of 25, he dug up his "Sten" submachine gun, he took action against the boss of his douar who was none other than his cousin. He goes into hiding with six companions. He meshes this entire part of Algeria with a dense and dense network with the sole objective of taking action which will lead to the outbreak of the armed struggle on November 1, 1954.

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.

Has everything really been said about the Algerian war? Although the archives are opening up, almost fifty years after the signing of the Evian Agreements (March 18, 1962), direct witnesses are beginning to disappear. They are, however, unique bearers of history, often the only ones able to illustrate the harsh reality of a long-hidden period. Gérard Zwang, surgeon of the contingent between May 1956 and June 1958, is one of these essential witnesses who help us discover an original history of the Algerian War. During his service, in charge of treating the most atrocious wounds of his fellow soldiers, he sees the war from the side of its victims. He did not fight with a machine pistol in his hand, but behind the closed doors of an operating room where life gives way to death in a matter of seconds.

In 1958 in Paris, during the Algerian War, a young trainee lawyer, Maître Chabrier, was assigned to defend an Algerian garbage collector against paratroopers who had beaten him. Stay out of Algerian affairs, his peers advise him because the trial is taking a political turn. Chabrier acquired the reputation of the Fellaghas' lawyer.

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

In prison in colonial Algeria, shortly after the end of the Second World War, three indigenous cellmates make out. Once free, they attack the authority represented by the triad of the boss, the gendarme and the administrator. “Living the colonial condition,” confided Tewfik Farès, “is something! It’s not sociologically or historically speaking. It’s life. And I think that’s all there in it. [...] For a hundred and thirty years, we wait. We hold back. We push back. We hope. At the same time, on different occasions, there are skirmishes, unrest.