The Battle of Algiers (Italian: La battaglia di Algeri; Arabic: معركة الجزائر, romanized: Maʿrakat al-Jazāʾir) is a 1966 Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.

It is based on action undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962) against the French government in North Africa, the most prominent being the eponymous Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria.

It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle.

The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the events that occurred in the capital city of French Algeria between November 1954 and December 1957, during the Algerian War of Independence.

Because of partisan warfare between the Algerian locals and pieds-noirs (ethnic Europeans born in Algeria), in which both sides commit acts of increasing violence, France sends French Army paratroopers to the city to fight against and capture members of the National Liberation Front (FLN).

The film ends with a coda depicting nationalist demonstrations and riots, suggesting that although France won the Battle of Algiers, it lost the Algerian War.

The FLN commandeer the Casbah via summary execution of Algerian criminals and suspected French collaborators; they commit terrorism, including actions like the real-life Milk Bar Café bombing, to harass Europeans.

The story begins and ends from the perspective of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Haggiag), a petty criminal who is politically radicalized while in prison.

[3] The Battle of Algiers was inspired by the 1962 book Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger, an FLN military commander's account of the campaign, by Saadi Yacef.

Salash Baazi, an FLN leader who had been exiled by the French, approached Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project.

[citation needed] To meet the demands of film, The Battle of Algiers uses composite characters and changes the names of certain persons.

The film makes special use of television in order to link western audiences with images they are constantly faced with that are asserted to express the "truth".

[citation needed] Martin had been dismissed several years earlier from the Théâtre National Populaire for signing the manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War.

Gillo Pontecorvo wrote the music for The Battle of Algiers, but because he was classified as a "melodist-composer" in Italy, he was required to work with another composer as well; his good friend Ennio Morricone collaborated with him.

"[20] In 1970 the film finally received a certificate for distribution in France, but release was further delayed until 1971 because of terroristic threats as well as civil opposition from veterans' groups.

[19] The Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), a far-right paramilitary group, made bomb threats to theaters that sought to show the film.

[19] Most French audiences found its portrayal of the conflict to be nuanced and balanced, and the only disruption occurred in Lyons when an attendant threw ink at the screen.

[18] The film achieved a surprising degree of popular success at the American box office, stoked by anti-war sentiments amid the movement against military involvement in Vietnam.

"[22] Robert Sitton at The Washington Post called the film "One of the most beautiful I have ever seen" and said it "is just as important for our times as the works of Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl, Carl Dreyer and Luchino Visconti were for theirs.

"[18] Pauline Kael championed the film in The New Yorker, writing: "The burning passion of Pontecorvo acts directly on your emotions.

"[30] Also, according to Anthony Frewin, Kubrick's personal assistant, he stated: "When I started work for Stanley in September 1965 he told me that I couldn't really understand what cinema was capable of without seeing The Battle of Algiers.

[31] The American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh took inspiration from the film while directing the drug war drama Traffic, noting that it (along with Costa-Gavras's Z) had "that great feeling of things that are caught, instead of staged, which is what we were after.

The Palestinian-American academic Edward Said (famous for his work Orientalism) praised The Battle of Algiers (along with Pontecorvo's other film, Burn!)

"[43] The British-Pakistani writer and activist Tariq Ali placed The Battle of Algiers in his top 10 films list for the 2012 Sight and Sound poll.

[47] Pontecorvo, hearing that the journalist Jimmy Breslin had characterized The Battle of Algiers as a guerrilla warfare training film on American television, replied: Perhaps he is right, but that is much too simple.

[48]President Arturo Frondizi (Radical Civic Union, UCR) directed introduction of the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College.

The Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict regarded it as useful for commanders and troops facing similar issues in occupied Iraq.

"[51] At the time of the 2003 Pentagon screening, legal and "pirate" VHS and DVD versions of the movie were available in the United States and elsewhere, but the image quality was degraded.

The extras include former US counter-terrorism advisors Richard A. Clarke and Michael A. Sheehan discussing The Battle of Algiers' depiction of terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

Directors Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone discussed its influence on film.