Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

sullivanday This is great film-making, you truly believe you are watching a documentary. The pacing is just right, the action seems real and the performances are wonderful. It is just fascinating to watch. But in this post-9/11 world, it does put this film in a different light. Are we to admire the characters that shoot people in the back and plant bombs in crowded cafes? Ironically, Algeria struggled for many years with its own internal civil war with terrorist groups.

Takethispunch The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the events that occurred in the capital city of French Algeria between November 1954 and December 1957, during the Algerian War of Independence. The narrative begins with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah. Then partisan warfare between Muslims and Pied-Noir in which both sides exchange acts of increasing violence leads to the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt the National Liberation Front (FLN). The paratroopers are depicted as winning the battle by neutralizing the whole of the FLN leadership through either assassination or capture. However, the film ends with a coda depicting nationalist demonstrations and riots, suggesting that although France won the Battle of Algiers, it lost the Algerian War.

mbouchagour As Algerian, I watched this movie 2 times a year for 20 years, this movie is a part of my story. It helped me to put imagines and sounds to stories I heard from my teachers, cousins, as my grand-parents and my parents still can't talk about that horrible war.By now, as I'm growing old, I understand that this movie is not the 'Truth', it was 'war', and in a war even good people can do horrible things. And I know what I'm talking about as I was there, in Algeria, during the 'Dark Decennial', while we were fighting against our own people whom turned terrorists in the name of Islam.So for those who will watch this film, please just remember not to judge any of the parties : Algerian /or/ French. It was a war and no war is nice, people die, and those who survive will suffer. Films/art are a form of exorcism for that pain we keep silently inside.I like this movie, because I saw tears in the beautiful green eyes of my grand mother every time she watched it and it always gave her a good opportunity to cry for my grand father that she lost during the war. I saw my father crying for his father that he never knew, and saw him also being closer to his mom because. For me, this movie will always be a 'Good movie to watch in Family'

FedRev The Battle of Algiers is a controversial film about the struggle of Algerian rebels to throw off French occupation. The film depicts the guerrilla tactics of the Algerian insurgency as well as the French counter-insurgency designed to contain and squash the rebellion. Shot in a documentary/newsreel style, the film follows several narrative threads, and takes us inside the command structures on both sides of the conflict. The film ironically points out that the French commander was part of the resistance against the Nazis, and now he's in the role of the occupier, using his knowledge of resistance against those struggling for freedom. Though The Battle of Algiers has a natural back and forth rhythm, showing attacks by one side and then counter attacks by the other, in the end the film's conscience sides with the Algerians struggling for independence and against colonialism. Even though both sides are shown committing acts of violence against civilians, leading some to believe the film is being objective and neutral, the film gives a clear sense of purpose to the Algerians and celebrates their ultimate victory, even though they lose the battle portrayed in the film. As a result The Battle of Algiers was banned in France for 5 years, and the film stands as a powerful depiction of revolutionary struggle against foreign occupation, as well as the lengths colonial powers will go to in order to maintain their empires.