Craig Mazin · 2019 · United States / United Kingdom · 1 season
A miniseries about the 1986 nuclear accident and, above all, about the chain of decisions that delayed acknowledging the disaster. It matters here for how it shows the cost of a system in which reporting the real problem is more dangerous than the problem itself — the same dynamic behind official conflict figures that arrive late or arrive shrunk.
Read the entryGillo Pontecorvo
A reconstruction of the urban insurrection in the Casbah of Algiers between 1954 and 1957 and of the French army response. Shot in black and white in a newsreel register, it lays out both mechanics in parallel: the clandestine cell organised in sealed compartments, and the military apparatus that dismantles it through systematic torture. It is still screened at military and intelligence academies as a case study in urban counterinsurgency.
A work belongs here if it helps make sense of a conflict: historical context, testimony, field reporting, theory that holds up outside the classroom. The test is not how recent or famous it is, but whether it leaves the reader better equipped to read tomorrow’s news.
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