Mani Sharpe: Late-colonial French Cinema

Edinburgh University Press, 2024, softcover, 280 pages, 15.6 x 23.3 cm

Deploying the term ‘late-colonial’ to describe a body of largely French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), this book revolves around one question – what is late-colonial French cinema? – generating two answers.

Firstly, Sharpe argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Secondly, Sharpe contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of ‘redemptive pacifism