Outside the Law (2010) — Algeria

           The personal, the political, and the historical clash in this dramatization of the Algerian fight for independence from France. The story is told through the experiences of three Algerian brothers, each of whom had radically different experiences after leaving Algeria and who, therefore, engaged the liberation movement in different ways. To France the National Liberation Front (FLN) was a terrorist organization; to Algerians they were a liberation movement and political party. Some sympathetic French helped the FLN, while some Algerians enjoyed comfortable lives in France and resisted the movement. At one point Abdelkader asks a French secret servant agent what was different about France's resistance of the Germans and Algeria's resistance of the French: "You're on the wrong side now." The French occupied Algeria in 1925, then signed a peace agreement with the FLN in 1962 that granted independence. Liberation was successful, but as this film shows, many people on both sides paid deep personal costs. Outside the Law was an official selection at Cannes and was also nominated for Best Foreign Film. In Arabic and French, with English subtitles.