The Battle Of Algiers ( La Battaglia di Algeri )

The French Colonel...who was forced even to torture! One of the many women...who stopped at nothing to win! The Algerian Street Boy...who became a rebel hero!

Written by Franco Solinas and based upon the Algerian war, when French colonial armies dominated the streets in North Africa from 1954–1962, The Battle of Algiers depicts the first three years of struggle for the Algerian people with attention paid to both halves of the street-raving battle.
Algeria. The late 1950s. The French have just been driven out of Vietnam and sense a similar unrest in their governmental province of Algeria. There has been an ongoing insurgency in the mountains, and the violence threatens to spill out into the city streets. In the Casbah—the Arab urban territory—instability is growing, and word of the revolution in the countryside is inspiring revolt. An underground terrorist faction, the FLN, is organizing the population, and the State will not tolerate such treason. They arrest and execute several members of the group, and this in turn inspires retaliation from the rebels. They target and kill several police officers. Pro-European vigilantes begin a bombing campaign in the Casbah, killing innocent women and children. The FLN responds with its own series of well-placed explosions.
The government realizes it can no longer control the situation and calls in the French military. Under the guidance of Col. Mathieu, there is hope that his paratroopers will regain order and repress the uprising.
But soon, the people start to protest, rising up from their malaise and taking to the streets. Unable to control nearly half a million people in vocal, near-violent resistance, the end of French colonialism in Algeria is all but assured.