One of the few films in Oscar® history to be a nominee in two separate non-consecutive years. It was a foreign film nominee for 1966 and then a nominee for screenplay and direction for 1968.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo and composer Ennio Morricone had regular disagreements over the movie's score. At one point, Pontecorvo had a melody stuck in his mind which he desperately wanted as a theme in the movie. He went to Morricone's apartment to play it for him, and hummed the tune all the way up to the top floor. Then Morricone asked him to wait with the tune, since he had conceived a melody of his own. To Pontecorvo's surprise, the tune was exactly the same as the one he had in mind, and he was delighted to find out that after all those months of struggling, they had finally found something, separate from each other, on which they could agree. It wasn't until months later at the Venice film festival that Morricone admitted that he had pulled a prank on him; he had already heard Pontecorvo humming the song while coming up the stairs, and decided to pretend he had come up with the same melody himself.
Because of its contentious pro-Algerian politics, the film wasn't released in France until 1971.
Such was the realistic nature of the pseudo-documentary filming, the movie was released in the USA with a disclaimer that not one foot of newsreel was used.
This film was very rarely shown in France until recently, and the torture scenes were cut in the US and UK.