Gillo Pontecorvo | 1966 | Algeria/Italy | 121'

The battle of Algiers isn't just any kind of war movie. It's a case study in modern warfare. It's a prime example of insurgency and anticolonial resistance. Women, children, men: everyone takes part in the rebellion against the French occupation of Algeria in the 1950s. Women dress up to look more 'European', flirt with the French occupants all to get through to checkpoints in order to plant their bombs. More than just war, this striking scene opens up a class discussion and paves the way for a movie unique in its approach – it shows violence from both sides of the conflict, though in the end it remains a conflict of knives versus cannons, insurgency versus occupant. Pontecorvo’s tour de force remains to be astonishingly relevant today.