Liberty at Night

The story is set in Paris during the Algerian war. Jean is a man who supports the movement for Algerian independence. Mouche, the wife he lives apart from, is doing the same thing; neither knows what the other is doing. Mouche is killed by members of the right wing organisation known as the OAS. After a long period of collapse, Jean meets a young woman named Gemina. The film tells political violence in a plain, almost silent register. The director dedicated the film to his own parents, who in those years supported Algerian independence and lived under threat for it. The eighty two minutes move with very few words. Emmanuelle Riva and Maurice Garrel appear in Philippe Garrel’s French film, completed in 1984.