Wow. This is amazing. I kept hearing about the Battle of Algiers now and again over the course of my movie watching career (and it is a career), but I had never seen it.

It’s amazing. The movie plays itself out almost like a documentary. Though filmed a few years after the events depicted, it seems far more vivid. I suspect part of it is the black and white, which I love more and more. The filming and action make the movie feel like it was made more recently than it actually was.

If you even sort of like spy-genre movies, this is an amazing trip that takes off for two hours and doesn’t let go. Best part: based on actual events.

Vivid, difficult, gripping and epic. Absolutely relevant. Banned in France for five years, it portrayed a more nuanced perspective of the French than I had expected. And is stronger for it.

This is a must see.

And I’m curious about the post-colonial Algerian cinema, which at least in the 70s was apparently largely consumed with stories of the war for liberation.

This is worth a watch. Change the names of the two parties and their situation could apply to a number of current world situations. However, it is not without a bias, of course. Watch it with that caveat.

The Battle of Algiers is a harrowing and timely portrait of the fight for independence that happened in the 1950s in Algeria. There is an amazing and shocking documentary feel to the film with hundreds or perhaps thousands of extras appearing the film. With a conscious blurring of the boundaries between drama and documentary as the filming takes place in the streets and with many of the people who would have been there. It provides a methodical look inside both sides of a struggle and it drags on and the stakes increase. Unique and bold filmmaking.