Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlić has been forging a career out of documentaries that shed light on the history and society of her country, strongly relying on archive materials, such as in the IDFA-winning The Other Side of Everything [+lee también:
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Of course, Yugoslavia still plays a major role. The director arrives at the Algerian War through a wider topic: the Non-Aligned Movement, which is what another new film by Turajlić, Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels, deals with in a more wide-ranging manner. It is expected to come out soon, and the two constitute a diptych, of sorts.

And it was Stevan Labudović, a cameraman for the Yugoslav Newsreels who became Yugoslav president Tito's personal cinematographer, who was the starting point. In addition to following Tito on his travels around the world, Labudović was assigned to help Algeria's National Liberation Front (ALN) counter French diplomacy and propaganda. He spent almost four years in the war, filming in the field and serving in the movement's political commissariat. “Our trust in him was absolute because Tito sent him,” says a former commander of the ALN.

Turajlić interviews Labudović (who has since died) extensively at his home and in the archive of the still-functioning Yugoslav Newsreels. Although hard of hearing, he was a lucid, bright storyteller. He had kept meticulous diaries throughout his stint in Algeria, and the director elegantly combines them with the footage, much of which has never been seen before, except for the material that ended up in the newsreels – last seen some 60 years ago. These images possess a power that hits hard in 2022, with an infinite number of layers and meanings.

We realise that structurally speaking, the first half of the film, which takes place in Belgrade and where Turajlić explores the archive and talks to Labudović, his wife and a friend from the Yugoslav Red Cross, serves as a build-up to the unexpectedly exciting trip she takes to Algeria. Actually, it is almost certainly this preparation that makes the scenes filmed with Labudović's old comrades so breath-taking.

On the surface, these are just interviews with old people who have interesting stories to tell, combined with the archive materials and the director's original footage filmed in key locations. But for most viewers, the war and Algeria's fight for independence at the United Nations (where every mention of it is ignored or sabotaged by the French) are little known, and Turajlić's decision to position this as an exploration of the power of the image in the anti-colonial struggle results in an intense drive in the viewer to learn more.

The interviewees are singularly intriguing, from the aforementioned commander to a world-weary but softly spoken man who was in charge of ALN's cinema truck, to the gentleman who started the Voice of the Arabs radio station, another essential propaganda tool in the war for liberation, to a New York-based activist who lobbied the UN for the country’s independence.

Turajlić, Sylvie Gadmer and Anne Renardet are credited as editors, which implies a complicated and painstaking process, but the film incorporates all of the disparate time periods, locations, types of footage and characters into a fairly smooth whole. Troy Herion's acoustic guitar-and-strings score that accompanies Labudović's footage is atmospheric, but with an ever-present tension bubbling just beneath the surface.

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels is a co-production between Serbia's Poppy Pictures, France's Survivance, Croatia's Restart and Montenegro's Kino, in association with Yugoslav Newsreels, Al Jazeera and Chicken & Egg Pictures.