La battaglia di Algeri

The anti-colonial struggle, unfortunately, remains relevant today: the world continues to reproduce dynamics of colonial domination, and in the ongoing intertwining of cinema and the world, La battaglia di Algeri, Gillo Pontecorvo's masterpiece, continues to fulfill its role as a guide for thinking with and for cinema.

Directed three years after Algeria's independence, it won the award for best film at the Venice Film Festival. It was Pontecorvo's fourth feature film and his third collaboration with screenwriter Franco Solinas, both determined to address colonialism [1] and the Third World. They were impressed by the National Liberation Front's FLN ability to galvanize the Algerian people, its capacity for political organization, and its use of violence — as Frantz Fanon said in Les Damnés de la Terre (1961), “decolonization is always a violent process.”

The central narrative of the story unfolds between 1954 and 1957, focusing on the escalation of clashes between the FLN and the French government. Themes such as women's participation in the revolution, political integration with Muslim traditions, and the daily life of the population in Algiers, especially in the Casbah, are vividly present in the work.

The script for La battaglia di Algeri is inspired by the memoirs of Saadi Yacef, co-founder and military commander of the FLN, written while he was imprisoned in France after three death sentences. The initiative to turn his book into a film came from Yacef, who sought partnerships in Italy and returned with Pontecorvo and Solinas, beginning two years of intense research [2].

Yacef's participation was decisive: as co-producer of the film and an expert on Algiers, he facilitated filming, extras, and locations. His desire to record history aligned with the interests of the director and screenwriter in documenting the battle.

Marcello Gatti, director of photography with whom Pontecorvo had already worked on Kapò, said that Pontecorvo wanted the film to “look like a documentary.” Hence the choice to shoot in black and white and with high contrast. The black and white, combined with elements such as voice-over narration — some taken from original audio recordings, such as FLN communiqués — contributed to the desired newsreel atmosphere. After all, newsreels were the way people got their news.

The search for authenticity also influenced the decision to work almost exclusively with non-professional actors. Pontecorvo obsessively sought out faces for his characters among the Algerian population. Sarah Maldoror, a pioneering African filmmaker who began her career there as an assistant director, was tasked with helping in this search. The repeated close-ups on these faces even point to ways of thinking about the construction of this work, which has the anti-colonial struggle itself as its protagonist.

Yacef also joined the cast, playing himself under the name El-hadi Jaffar. Brahim Haggiag, an ordinary man transformed by political struggle, was chosen to play Ali La Pointe, another FLN leader and martyr of the Battle of Algiers. Similarly, a thief who was in prison at the time of filming was granted a pardon to act: he appears at the beginning of the film being tortured to reveal La Pointe's hiding place. And the man sentenced to death who shouts “Long live Algeria!” on his way to the guillotine had also been sentenced to death in real life.

French actor Jean Martin, who played Colonel Mathieu, was the only professional actor in the cast. It is his testimony that allows us to think of La battaglia di Algeri not only as an example of cinéma verité, but as a film overflowing with reality. He recalls that, during filming, the set was often infected by the emotion of the past, especially in the scenes of revolt. It was as if the population were reliving the events that led to liberation. Once again, the world was overflowing and invading the cinema. During filming, Pontecorvo was reportedly greeted by the population — proving the shared conviction that the film was made for the Algerians.

In the final sequence, three years after the defeat at the Battle of Algiers, a new popular uprising erupts in the streets. A soldier exclaims: “Go home! What do you want?” and the crowd responds: “Our freedom!” The film thus highlights the urgency of thinking about colonialism from the perspective of those who were colonized, to paraphrase Algerian philosopher Marie-José Mondzain [3]. The film, which for decades served as an entry point for understanding the history of colonialism through French involvement in Algeria, remains relevant 60 years after its release, both for its cinematic attributes and for the critical reflections it provokes.

[1] However, Parà, the title of the first script conceived by Pontecorvo and Solinas, would never be made. It had a Eurocentric point of view that was not in keeping with the times, telling the story from the perspective of a former paratrooper who turned against the French after learning of the violence perpetrated by the colonizers. According to Solinas, nothing from Parà's proposal was used in the script that was filmed, serving only as inspiration.

[2] According to Pontecorvo's biographer in the documentary Marxist Poetry: The Making of The Battle of Algiers (2004), the director was Yacef's third choice for the film. Francesco Rosi was contacted but was unable to commit at the time, and Luchino Visconti was also considered, but his views did not align with Yacef’s.

[3] See Marie-José Mondzain, K de Kolônia: Kafka e a descolonização do imaginário. São Paulo: Contraponto, 2024.