Film · Drama, Documentary, History

Dawn of the Damned (1965)

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.

Director

Ahmed Rachedi

Writers

Mouloud Mammeri, Ahmed Rachedi, René Vautier

Country

Algeria

Language

French

Release date

July 5, 1965

Original title

L'Aube des Damnés