Cinematic Siblings

Chronicle of the Years of Fire

Credits

Original title :

Ahdat sanawovach el-djamr/Chronique des années de braise

Country :

Algeria

Year :

1975

Director :

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina

Version :

vostEN

Duration :

177 minutes

Format :

digital | 4K Restoration, restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna

Actors :

Yorgo Voyagis, Larbi Zekkal, Cheikh Nourredine, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina

Awards :

Palme d’or, Cannes 1975

synopsis

Spanning the late 1930s to the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence in 1954, the film unfolds in six chapters, each marking a stage in Algeria’s path toward revolution. At its center is Ahmed, a poor farmer whose life becomes entwined with the growing nationalist movement. What begins as a portrait of modest rural life gradually expands into an epic chronicle of political awakening, capturing how individual grievances coalesce into a collective consciousness and, ultimately, a movement for liberation.

Here's cinema as a history painting, as epic as Bertolucci's 1900. If our movie memories weren't so Hollywood-skewed, we'd think of it as a classic.

Mark Cousins

One of the most singular Arab films. Uses dialogue sparingly, is anchored by an atypically subdued protagonist and culminates with an uncathartic ending. It remains the sole Arab and African Palme d’Or winner: the film that placed North African cinema on the map and changed the course of the region’s then-budding national cinemas – government-backed film industries emerging from the shadow of colonization.

Criterion