Algeria, Yugoslavia and Cinematic Uprising: MEMO in Conversation with Mila Turajlic

Middle East Monitor Conversations

Algeria won its War on Independence because it won a media war against the French following help from Yugoslavia. But what did the images coming out of Algiers show and how did they frame its battle for a new beginning?

France lost the Algerian War (1954-1962) diplomatically because it lost the media war and this forced it to end its 132-year rule of the North African country. The fight for independence was led by the Algerian National Liberation Front or FLN, who had help from abroad. One country that assisted them was Yugoslavia led by Marshal Josip Tito, who was looking for a way to expand Yugoslavia's reach in the world following its isolation from the Soviet Union. Helping Algeria was part of a new and alternative politics Belgrade was fashioning for countries who did not want to fall into either the American or Soviet orbit, called the non-alignment movement.

Based around 'third world' solidarity, decolonisation, development and independence, the movement today has 120 members. Tito aided the FLN by helping them win the information war, he sent his favourite cameraman Stevan Labudovic, who snuck into Algeria and filmed many hours of footage of FLN raids and helped give rise to Algerian media independent of France. His reels are the subject of a new film 'Cine-Guerrillas/Non-Aligned: Scene from the Labudovic Reels', which shows not only Algeria's fight for independence, but the development of an idea, the non-alignment movement. Joining us on MEMO Conversation is filmmaker Mila Turajlic.

Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Turajlic is an award-winning filmmaker and archive ‘artivist’ whose works include 'Cinema Komunisto' and IDFA-winner 'The Other Side of Everything'. She is the founder of the Non-Aligned Newsreels research project, an artistic exploration of the ‘orphaned’ status of film archives made by Yugoslavia in a gesture of ‘ciné-solidarity’ with the non-aligned world. Performative and video iterations of the project were curated for IDFA on Stage, international exhibitions and biennials (Berlin’22, Belgrade’22, Sharjah’25). In 2020 Mila was invited to join the AMPAS (Oscars) Documentary Branch. She was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2022.