Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Cast

Mouloud Mammeri

Narrator (voice)

Mohamed Chouikh

René Vautier

Ahmed Rachedi

Mazouz Ould-Abderrahmane

Sid Ahmed Agoumi

Salah Teskouk

Samia Meziane

Mahdia Magroufel

Hamou Saadaoui