The SAS (Section Administrative Spécialisée) were created in 1956 by the French army during the Algerian war to pacify "the natives". During the day, the SAS were used as treatment centres and at night as torture centres, in order to crush the Algerian resistance. The SAS were inhabited by French soldiers and auxiliaries (harkis, goumiers) and their families. At independence in 1962, a few families of auxiliaries stayed on; the vacant buildings were occupied by families of martyrs awaiting the better days promised by the new Algeria. 46 years later, the SAS at Laperrine, in the Bouira region, still exists, a unique place inhabited by people who have taken refuge there. They have been joined by farmers fleeing the terrorism of the 90s. They all live as best they can in a place they did not choose, suffering the consequences of war.

Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Al...

In 1967, Visconti came to Algiers for the filming of The Stranger with Mastroianni and Anna Karina. ...

"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi ...

During the Algerian war (1954-1962), some French people helped the F.L.N. in France.

This 17-minute documentary is featured on the 3-Disc Criterion Collection DVD of The Battle of Algie...

In 2024, Abdelkrim Baba Aissa, aged 75, engages in a series of filmed interviews with Algerian journ...

Jean Sénac, born in Béni Saf in Algeria in 1926 and died in Algiers in 1973, is today considered one...

By ending the life of Jean Senac on August 30, 1973 in Algiers, his assassins believed they would si...

Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first jour...

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. T...

Cheikh Djemaï looks back on the genesis of Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature film, The Battle of Algiers (1...

Pierre Clément, student and photographer of René Vauthier, first accompanied him to Tunisia to make ...

This docu-fiction recounts the difficulties overcome by an ALN detachment whose perilous mission i...
Achour is thirty. Night and day, he walks. Rebellious soul, he crisscrosses Alger and its neighborho...

Immigrated to the Paris region since 1964, Kader decides to spend the summer holidays with his famil...

He is a 75-year-old half-blind man. He takes 3000 steps every day. Since 2004 he has made a decision...

The image of French prisoners was very often evoked in Algerian cinema and literature, but until tod...

More than fifty years after the release of the film “The Battle of Algiers” in theaters in June 1966...