Smashing Monuments

The Battle of Algiers

September 1966 •Italian

Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.

Dawn of the Damned

July 1965 •French

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.

El primer dia d'octubre

November 2017 •Catalan

Motherless Children

July 1980 •Indonesian

After his wife passes away, the ailing Akbar marries Tina, a widow. Akbar’s illness makes him lose his job so Tina has to work in a garment factory. Akbar’s effort to find a job is fruitless and he passes away shortly after. His three children Mimi, Memet, and Ayu cannot stand their stepmother’s fickleness. They leave quietly to find the family of their biological mother. This is not easy since they don’t have her address. They work at any job to survive - housemaid, shoe shiner, parking boy etc. One day they meet John who buys and sells used newspapers. Mimi and Memet are given a small business of selling ice and pastries. Then Memed accidently takes the wrong train but fortunately, a rich man adopts him. However, Memed returns home as he misses his younger siblings. The reunion is short since Ayu passes away.

Silariang: Cinta Yang (Tak) Direstui

January 2018 •Indonesian

After several years of being in relationship, Yusuf knew at what point he had to be brave to take his relationship to the next level with Zulaikha. Their love is pure and sincere and both hope this will become a solid foundation for both of them in the future. But the future is indeed unpredictable. Their love is hindered by caste differences. Zulaikha, who is descended from Bugis aristocrats, is not allowed to marry Yusuf, who, although he is well off, is from the common people of Makassar. History repeated itself because in the past, Yusuf's father, Dirham faced a similar polemic. Unlike his father, Yusuf was bolder against custom. He chose to fight for his love and asked Zulaikha to run with him.

The Year of Living Dangerously

December 1982 •English

Australian journalist Guy Hamilton travels to Indonesia to cover civil strife in 1965. There—on the eve of an attempted coup—he befriends a Chinese Australian photographer with a deep connection to and vast knowledge of the Indonesian people, and also falls in love with a British national.

Sarabha

November 2023 •Panjabi

Young revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha fights for Indian Independence in the early 1900s.

Rose Island

December 2020 •Italian

In 1968, engineer Giorgio Rosa established the independent state called "The Isle of Roses" off the coast of Rimini, built on a platform outside the territorial waters, with Esperanto as the official language. The Italian authorities did not take it well because the micronation was seen as an expedient to not pay taxes on the revenues obtained thanks to the arrival of numerous tourists and curious people.

Cremaster 3

May 2002 •English

CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...

Lions of the Skeleton Coast

April 2025 •English

Three lionesses try to survive in the Namibian desert.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

February 2019 •English

Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.

Greenland

December 2024 •English

Culloden

December 1964 •English

Culloden, Scottish Highlands, April 16th, 1746. It was one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Great Britain. Its aftermath was tragic. The men responsible for such a disaster must be exposed. The men, women and children who suffered because of it must be remembered.

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956

July 2025 •Arabic

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.

Ein Traum von Revolution

April 2024 •German

When the revolution in Nicaragua won its victory nearly 40 years ago, the world began to dream. A young generation was taking the reins in a country of grand utopias. From West Germany alone, 15,000 “brigadists” travelled to help rebuild the war-torn country: liberals, greens, unionists, social democrats, leftists and church representatives harvested coffee and cotton, built schools, kindergartens and hospital wards. No movement has mobilised so many people. What became of the hopes and dreams of the revolutionaries and their supporters?

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté

November 2021 •French

Frantz Fanon alone embodies all the issues of French colonial history. Martinican resistance fighter, he enlisted, like millions of colonial soldiers, in the Free Army out of loyalty to France and the idea of freedom that it embodies for him. A writer, he participated in the bubbling life of Saint-Germain with Césaire, Senghor and Sartre, debating tirelessly on the destiny of colonized peoples. As a doctor, he revolutionized the practice of psychiatry, seeking in the relations of domination of colonial societies the foundations of the pathologies of his patients in Blida. Activist, he brings together through his action and his history of him, the anger of peoples crushed by centuries of colonial oppression. But beyond this exceptional journey which makes sensitive the permanence of French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles at the gates of the Algerian desert, he leaves an incomparable body of work which has made him today one of the most studied French authors across the Atlantic.

Jakarta vs Everybody

November 2020 •Indonesian

Dom came to Jakarta with a hope of becoming an actor. His encounter with Pingkan and Radit brings him deep into the labyrinth of drug trafficking. Will he abandon his dream?

Bhoutan, le royaume dans le ciel

April 2023 •French

Mais qu'est ce qu'elles veulent ?

April 1975 •English

In this documentary by Coline Serreau, known for her feature film Why Not?, a selection of Frenchwomen in characteristically no-win situations discuss what they are experiencing and answer, if only by implication, the question: "What do women want?"

A Copy of My Mind

February 2016 •Indonesian

The new romance between a beauty salon worker and a subtitle writer for pirated DVDs gets pulled into danger when they view a forbidden recording.