Chronicle of the Years of Fire

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's 1975 film covers the fifteen years in Algeria between 1939 and 1954. It begins with a peasant leaving his village because of drought and runs up to the day the war of independence starts. Its argument is not hidden in the title: the war that broke out in 1954 was not a sudden event but the result of a long process of deprivation and repression. The narrative is built in chapters, each given to a year or an event, and the total running time exceeds three hours. The visual scale is large; crowd scenes, desert landscapes and period design made it the most expensive production in Algerian cinema to that date. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1975, the first African and Arab film to do so. Who it's for: those interested in the history of colonialism and in large-scale historical epic. Who it's not for: viewers looking for something short and brisk; the film is long, episodic and deliberately heavy.