Movies Similar to Perret in France and Algeria

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat(1896)

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Muñiz, The Argentinian In The Algerian Revolution(2020)

Roberto Muniz, nicknamed "Mahmoud the Argentinian," was a revolutionary fighter who joined the National Liberation Army in 1959 to support the Algerian cause in the war of independence against France. He joined a clandestine group that manufactured weapons and ammunition to be transported to Algeria to support the revolution that began in 1954. After the war, the Algerian government invited the mujahid to stay, an offer he accepted to begin a new life as an employee of Sonnelgaz and a member of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA), accompanied by his wife Alfonsa, a textile union activist who came from Argentina to join this North African adventure.

Michael Youn - Du Morning Live à Divorce Club(2020)

Où sont les noirs ?(2020)

French actors Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Aïssa Maïga, Sonia Rolland, Deborah Lukumuena, Marie-France Malonga, Gary Dourdan and others speak up on the reality of black actors in the French movie industry.

Les Grandes Heures de l'automobile : Renault(2021)

Guerre aux images en Algérie(1985)

À Propos De... L'autre Détail(1985)

Documentary edited from testimonies on the torture of people who experienced the war. Some witnesses were tortured by Jean-Marie Le Pen. These testimonies will help defend the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in court against Jean-Marie Le Pen for defamation. The film was shown in 1985 during the trial and some witnesses also came to support the newspaper. But the 1963 amnesty law protects the politician, prohibiting the use of images that could harm people who served during the Algerian war.

They Joined the Front(2012)

In this film, four key witnesses, who live in Algeria today, as full-fledged Agerians, show us what this colonization was really like, so "beneficial" that they themselves perceived it as the oppression of one people by another. Three of them, who today would be called "pieds noirs," in other words, those Europeans to whom France, the occupying power, gave the best land, taken from the indigenous populations, work, and exclusive rights, not shared by the entire population, lived rather well compared to the majority of the "natives." The fourth was far from all that and lived in Argentina. Annie Steiner, Felix Colozzi, Pierre Chaulet, and Roberto Muniz explain to us what led them to show solidarity with the struggle of the weak, the humiliated, and to risk their freedom and their lives by committing to liberate Algeria.

De Gaulle, le monarque et le Parlement(2020)

Writer of O(2005)

Published in Paris in 1954, Story of O was an immediate bestseller and literary scandal: an elegantly written S&M fantasy that had all the hallmarks of being an autobiographical account by the pseudonymous Pauline Réage. In 1994 Dominique Aury, a mild-mannered, dowdy editor for France’s prestigious Gallimard press, revealed her authorship. Pola Rapaport explores Aury's inspiration, recreating the world of '50s literary Paris and setting it against dramatic sequences that bring the infamous book to life. The author as well as various French intellectuals expound on the thorny relationship between sexuality and power, submission and freedom, liberation and non-being.

Rhin et Danube(1948)

A documentary produced by the French armed forces which chronicles the way of France’s “1ere armée” in the second world war from the days it first crossed the Rhine in March of 1945, through the liberation of a POW-camp in Swabia, until the forces reached the Danube and the Alps at the end of the war and the day French troops marched in the victory parade in Berlin.

La France de l'épuration, entre vengeance et justice(2025)

Rosans, Bitter Honey(2011)

In 1963, Rosans, a village in the Hautes-Alpes region depopulated by the rural exodus, welcomed Harkis (military soldiers) forced to leave Algeria for supporting France during the Algerian War. Around thirty families settled in a camp below Rosans. Nearly half a century after their arrival, first- and second-generation Harkis and native Rosanais recount their experiences of this culture clash, often painful, sometimes happy. Language barriers, religious differences, living in barracks for 14 years, and unemployment were all obstacles to overcome in order to be accepted and then achieve mutual enrichment. Enriched with archive footage to explain the historical context of the time, the film seeks above all to express feelings and unspoken words.

Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party(2020)

Le K Benzema(2017)

France's top scorer in the Champions League, Karim Benzema has 81 caps in the French national team, but has not been called to France since 8 October 2015. On 13 April 2016, the Real Madrid striker was removed from the national team for an indefinite period of time following the "sextape" affair. With Damien Piscarel's contribution to the footballer's speech, he was able to look back at the situation, but also evoke his debut at Bron, his Lyon adventure and his transfer to Real Madrid. Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Franck Ribéry, to mention the Benzema case.

I carve smiles into mountains' wounds(2018)

Achour is thirty. Night and day, he walks. Rebellious soul, he crisscrosses Alger and its neighborhoods, stays at friends' houses and often leaves the city to meet the nearby montain in Kabylia, his alter-ego. In this environment, marked by war and terrorism, his resistance continues, mobile and ascending. Algerian hardcore-punk musician, Achour once screamed his anger against the country's regime and sang "Anarchytecture". But the movement died down, friends went their separate ways. His Facebook wall became his notebook, his window open to the world. It represents a scream aimed towards the echo of the mountains, between virtual wall, infinite facades of large complexes and the strata of mineral cliffs. A scream comes back at us.

The Magic of Christmas in Alsace(2019)

This documentary visits the towns and villages of the Alsace region of France at Christmastime. See the charmingly decorated storybook towns and learn of the unique holiday traditions and celebrations. The Alsatian landscape is covered with medieval towns, castle ruins and vineyards, and the communities of the region create a season of enchantment in their celebration of Christmas.

Dawn of the Damned(1965)

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Holidays Despite All(2001)

Immigrated to the Paris region since 1964, Kader decides to spend the summer holidays with his family in his native village, not far from Algiers. These few weeks, so eagerly awaited by both sides, constitute a special moment full of strong emotions. The camera follows the family in their meetings, their reunions, their difficulties, their visions of the country and its region, the celebrations, the weddings, their return to France… This film raises many questions. Within this family itself, between those who stayed in the country and those who emigrated to France, how do we perceive the situation in Algeria? What hopes do each of them have for their country? What about the Franco-Algerian relationship? Contemporary immigration? The desire for exile of Algerians today? Different discourses on both sides of the Mediterranean? The desires of each of them…

The Words Women Spoke One Day(2024)

1962, at the end of the Algerian War, Algerian independence activists are released from Rennes prison. For one night, filmmaker Yann Le Masson films them. They tell him their vision for the future of Algeria and the place women must occupy in the new society to be built. Fifty years later, with the soundtrack missing, Raphaël Pillosio sets out to find these women. Two deaf people set about lip-reading the women filmed by Yann Le Masson, revealing snatches of sentences, words cut short by the camera's shifts. An investigative film in which the few activists still alive discover their old testimonies and tell us their silent story. The reconstruction of the lost soundtrack will remain in suspense; no happy ending will come to absorb the absence, to cancel the ferocious operation of time. An essay film about cinema that depicts their disappearance, and forever keeps them alive.