Today Nuit Noire (Black Night) will be released at a select number of French cinemas. The controversial film, made by one of France's most respected directors, reconstructs the events of the night of 17 October 1961, when a protest against French policy in Algeria, then a colony on the brink of independence, sparked a huge police operation. Hundreds of demonstrators were killed or injured but there was no official acknowledgement at the time - or for decades afterwards.

For some, Nuit Noire is an overdue attempt to throw light on a shameful episode; for others, it is an unwarranted slur on a glorious imperial history. The bitter division reflects deep fissures in modern France, pitting the young, the left and millions of immigrants and their children against older, white, conservative nationalists.

On October 17, 1961, thousands of Algerian immigrants living in Paris took to the streets in support of the national liberation struggle being waged in Algeria against France by the FLN (Front Libération National - National Liberation Front). In response, the Paris police department violently broke up the demonstations, as well as took other severe actions related to the demonstrations. While the police originally claimed that only three deaths resulted from the conflict, historians estimate that between 32 and 200 demonstrators died. With almost no media coverage at the time, the events surrounding the massacre, as well as the death toll, were almost unknown both in France and worldwide for decades. For this reason, there is no generally-used name to designate these events.