Intimate Enemies (2007)

Director, Florent Emilio Siri. (111min)
This is another intense recent French film that explores the stresses and contradictions inherent in France’s attempt to hold on to Algeria against a vicious and successful insurgency. The film faces the issues of torture, atrocities, and conflict within the French forces over ‘ends and means’ squarely and without sentimentality. The ‘war without a name’ (1954–62) was largely off-limits as a subject in France for many years and this film was an important part of a move to re-open consideration of a controversial chapter in recent French history.