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Serious in intent, but melodramatic in style, the patriotic historical saga “Heliopolis” directed by Djaffar Gacem neatly uses the alliances of a fictional Muslim family to explicate events leading up to the brutal killings of indigenous Algerian civilians and the summary execution of native political leaders by French settler militias and soldiers in 1945. Algeria’s submission for the international feature Oscar is highly effective in showing the tensions between those who believed indigenous Algerians and French colonists would someday be treated equally under the French flag and those who pushed for the country’s independence. It also clearly presents the growing strain between the colonized and the colonists, albeit with a lot less subtlety.

In 1940, the Muslim Zenati family operates a successful wheat farming estate in Heliopolis that is the envy of the French colonial farmers in the Guelma district. Wary patriarch Mokdad, a widower and WWI French army veteran,...