The Algerian War in Film Fifty Years Later, 2004–2012

Book excerpt: The Algerian War in Film Fifty Years Later, 2004⁠–⁠2012 examines the cultural, political, and aesthetic significance of narrative films made during the fiftieth-anniversary period of the war, between 2004 and 2012. This period was a fruitful one, in which film became a central medium generating varied representations of the war, and Anne Donadey argues that the fiftieth-anniversary film production contributed to France’s move from a period of the return of the repressed to one of difficult anamnesis. Donadey provides a close analysis of twenty narrative films made during this period on both side of the Mediterranean, observing that while some films continue to center on the point of view of only one stake-holding group, a number of films open up new opportunities for multicultural French audiences to envision the war through the eyes of Algerian characters on-screen, and other films bring memories from various groups together in thoughtful synthesis that represent the complexity of the situation. Donadey takes this analysis a step further to analyze what types of gendered representations emerge in these films, given the important participation of Algerian women in the revolutionary war. Scholars of Francophone studies, film, women’s studies, and history will find this book particularly useful.