Telling the story of a French deserter who joins a Swiss far-right group, from which he later tries to flee for the love of a woman, Le petit soldat was one of Godard’s most controversial films, accused at the time of “fascism” by part of the official left and banned in France for three years, for the many allusions to the Algerian War, then at its peak. It is also the film of Godard’s first encounter with Anna Karina, who every time she enters the scene steals all the light around her. And the film of the celebrated aphorism that comes from a speech about photography, cinema and the truth: “”Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” (Cinemateca Portuguesa)
