"It's hard to start a revolution. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it. But, it's only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin. In short, Ali, there's still much to do.”

The film chronicles a series of events in Algiers preceding Algerian independence from French colonisation. At its centre, it tells the stories various pivotal revolutionaries: on Ali La Pointe, a former petty criminal turned rebel leader who uses urban guerrilla warfare tactics combined with this knowledge of the labyrinth of the inner city of Algiers against the highly organised French colonial army led by Colonel Philippe Mathieu.

Gillo Pontecorvo’s epic shows a divided Algiers: The side where the colonised live, where their movements are restricted and they are routinely subjected to humiliating searches and the side where the colonisers live in peace. It shows the cost of the revolution not just to the people but also to the region that is liberated.

War experienced through eyes of a child. Masculinity, cinema, loss. Zulfikar Filandra's newest film can be understood as his most minimal work, all footage is sourced except three personal photographs donated by his family - but again the final cinematic entity delivers timeless emotional depth and punch while dancing around the timeless themes of war and masculinity and the effect of these images on actual - lived - experienced - survived - reality.