Le Serment

The Madwoman of Toujane

May 1974 •French

This rambling political melodrama tells the story of a French Breton who learns about colonialism while teaching native students in France's colonies of Tunisia and Algeria and returns to his native Brittany to see that the same conditions prevail there.

Red Island

May 2023 •French

Madagascar, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. On an air base of the French army, the soldiers live the last carefree years of colonialism. Influenced by his readings of Fantômette, Thomas, a child who is not yet 10 years old, gradually forges a look at the world around him.

Intimate Enemies

October 2007 •French

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

Cléo from 5 to 7

April 1962 •French

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.

Oro, Plata, Mata

January 1982 •Tagalog

The story follows the Lorenzos and the Ojedas, the two land-owning clans in the island province of Negros, who were trying to cope and survive the war that lasted three tumultuous years, where they experienced or witnessed violence, blood, horror, and death. It is structured into three parts: Oro, a life of luxury and comfort in the city; Plata, a still-luxurious time of refuge in a provincial hacienda; and finally, Mata, a toilsome retreat deeper into the mountains. A war not only turned them into miserable people but also turned them into animals.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

October 2008 •French

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.

Surgeon during the Algerian War

January 2012 •French

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.

The Unknown Hero

March 2016 •Arabic

In the midst of the Algerian war for independence, a group of fighters is trapped in the mountains, surrounded by the colonial army. Cut off from their allies, they have only one hope: to transmit a vital message to save their unit. But crossing enemy lines is a suicide mission. Their only chance lies with an unexpected messenger: a courageous dog named Messaoud. Carrying the letter attached to his collar, he embarks on a perilous crossing, braving the hostile nature and the dangers of war. But when he is captured by the enemy, his courage and instinct become his only weapons. Prisoner, hunted, he must risk everything to escape and accomplish his mission before it is too late. Sacrifice, bravery and hope mingle in this breathtaking odyssey where the humblest of heroes can change the course of history. The Unknown Hero, a moving film which won first prize at the Arab World Festival in 2017.

Les Sept Remparts De La Citadelle

January 2018 •French

The feature film “The seven ramparts of the citadel”, a fiction recounting the conflict between an Algerian family expropriated from its land and a bloodthirsty settler; by director Ahmed Rachedi. Adapted from the eponymous novel by Mohamed Maarafia, the film, whose plot begins in 1954, tells the story of two characters, Thebti and Lucien, “the fellaga and the colonist”, a story of crossed destinies. “After having engaged in a fight to the death, after having both traveled a long path of embers, (they) finally find themselves face to face and above all each face to themselves”.

La Mission

January 1971 •Arabic

An Algerian peasant (fellah), crushed by the soldiers of the French colonial army, decides to resist. His young wife finds herself, despite herself, also enlisted in the Algerian resistance to flee the atrocities of harsh colonial persecution.

Le Remords

January 1974 •French

A filmmaker witnesses an act of racist police violence in Paris. He discusses with a friend whether and how he should make a film out of this.

Papillon

December 1973 •English

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

Here Ends the World We've Known

October 2022 •French

1645. Guadeloupe. Ibátali, a Kalinago native and wife of a French colonist, leads Olaudah, an escaped African captive, on a journey where he may lose his freedom and his life. She is ready to sacrifice him to save her own skin. But their wounds bring them together. Will this be enough to make them something other than what colonisation has decided they should be: a savage to be exterminated, an African to be enslaved?

A Captain's Honor

December 1982 •French

During a televised debate on the Algerian war in the early 1980s, Professor Paulet denounced the methods of Captain Caron, killed in action in 1957. The widow of the captain, Patricia, decided to file a defamation suit.

Krim Belkacem

November 2014 •Arabic

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.

The Epic of Cheikh Bouamama

January 1985 •Arabic

The story of the film revolves around the epic of Sheikh Bouamama, a leader of the national resistance in Algeria during the French colonial era. The events are taking place in southwestern Algeria. The film also tells about different stages of the resistance, especially about one of the uprisings of the Algerian people, namely "the battle of the sons of Sidi Sheikh Bouamama", in which French General Leuti was appointed to try to suppress and end this resistance.

Indochine

April 1992 •French

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

And the Dogs Were Silent

April 1976 •French

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

The Battle of Algiers

September 1966 •Italian

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.

Khouth Ma Aâtak Allah (عرس الدايم, خود ما اعطاك الله)

January 1981 •Arabic