"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. It tells the stories various pivotal revolutionaries and centers on Ali La Pointe(Brahim Hadjadj), 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(Jean Martin). 

Gillo Pontecorvo’s epic shows the two sides of 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. The authenticity of the work is such that various liberation armies have cited the film as an influence in the methods they employed in the fight for freedom.