The autobiographical account of the tormented life of a witness of the century: Louisa Ighilahriz, activist and leading figure in Algerian independence. A student, she joined the independence struggle at the age of 20, joining the ranks of the FLN on the eve of the Battle of Algiers in late 1956 under the name Lila. She took part in the high school students' strike, then fled into the maquis when she was actively sought after. She was part of the French FLN support network of "suitcase carriers" during the Battle of Algiers. Seriously wounded alongside her network leader, Saïd Bakel, during an ambush in 1957, hospitalized and then imprisoned, she suffered numerous tortures in French prisons. She will be saved from certain death by an anonymous person, she will seek, for forty years, to find him just to show him her gratitude... Emblematic of the painful Franco-Algerian history, Louisa's story is poignant and imbued with humanism.

Woman of Courage - Louisa Ighilahriz

Through interviews with former women combatants, this documentary recounts women's involvement and commitment to the struggle for Independence in Algeria.

Moudjahidate

"During the first three years of the 1954-1957 Algerian war, François Mitterrand, future President of the Republic, was in turn Minister of the Interior, then Minister of Justice. He was one of the leading figures in the governments of the Fourth Republic, which applied a particularly repressive policy in Algeria. A formidable unsaid surrounded by these three long years. The film reveals, thanks to unpublished archives, that François Mitterrand, Minister of Justice of the Guy Mollet government, refused pardon, in more than 80% of cases, to FLN militants sentenced to death. Why, as Minister of Justice, the one who would abolish the death penalty in 1981, did he support the policy of the worst of the government of Guy Mollet? Step by step, the documentary follows the future President during these years which will lead the Fourth Republic to the abyss. He questions French and Algerian witnesses and relatives at the time. Among them: Gisèle Halimi, lawyer, Roland Dumas, lawyer and deputy of the UDSR in 1956, André Rousselet, former chief of staff of François Mitterrand, Robert Badinter, Minister of Justice from 1981 to 1986, Jean Daniel, journalist writer. »