Chronicle of the Years of Fire
Directed by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina • 1975 • Algeria
Starring Yorgo Voyagis, Larbi Zekkal, Cheikh Nourredine
Burning with passion, poetry, and a nation’s fervent spirit of resistance, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring revolutionary epic vividly dramatizes the pivotal decades leading up to Algeria’s War of Independence through the harrowing saga of Ahmed (Yorgo Voyagis), a proud farmer seeking a dignified life, whose experience of brutal oppression and systemic injustice leads him, like so many others, to take a stand against the seemingly indomitable might of French colonialism. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, this awe-inspiring landmark of Arab cinema is an at once personal and expansive vision of a country awakening from despair to build an unbreakable movement of liberation.
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Chronicle of the Years of Fire
Directed by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina • 1975 • Algeria
Starring Yorgo Voyagis, Larbi Zekkal, Cheikh NourredineBurning with passion, poetry, and a nation’s fervent spirit of resistance, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring revolutionary epic vividly dramatizes the pivotal decades leading up to Alger...
Extras
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Martin Scorsese on CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS ON FIRE
This short program, produced by the Criterion Collection in 2025, features Martin Scorsese, founder of The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
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Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina's CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS ON FIRE
This program, produced by the Criterion Collection in 2025, features Algerian film scholar Ahmed Bedjaoui, a longtime friend of director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina.