Gillo Pontecorvo

Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006) was an Italian filmmaker and journalist best known for his much lauded masterpiece The Battle of Algiers (1966), for which he also won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966. He grew up in a Jewish family and when anti-Semitism was on the rise in the fascist Italy of the 1930s, Pontecorvo fled to Paris in 1938. There, he became involved in the film world, and worked as an assistant to Dutch documentary maker Joris Ivens.… (more)