The Olive Trees of Justice

Blue’s only full-length fiction film, The Olive Trees of Justice was the first film directed by an American to win the Critics’ Week prize at Cannes. Filmed on location in Algiers and the surrounding countryside during the crucial days of 1962, the film depicts the Algerian struggle for independence from the French by concentrating on a young Frenchman of Algerian descent (a “pied noir”) who returns to Algiers to visit his dying father. His memories of boyhood on his father’s farm are told in flashbacks with a lush serenity that contrasts with the teeming, tank-filled streets.