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.
David Simon y Ed Burns
2008 · United States · 1 season
Ari Folman
2008 · Israel / Germany / France · 1 h 30 min
Gillo Pontecorvo
1966 · Italy / Algeria · 2 h 1 min
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.
Where there is a review, it is signed. An unsigned recommendation commits no one; a signed one does. When somebody argues with a review here, they are arguing with a person.
No affiliate links and no commercial arrangements with publishers, distributors or platforms. The links on each entry are for reference and earn IAW nothing.
The list is curated and partial, and will stay that way. A work missing from it is not a verdict on that work.