Lion of the Desert

Lion of the Desert (1981) is an epic war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Moustapha Akkad and starring Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar, the Libyan resistance leader who fought Italian colonial forces for two decades. A British-Libyan-American production, 173 minutes.

It's 1929. Mussolini (Rod Steiger) dispatches General Graziani (Oliver Reed) to crush the Bedouin uprising once and for all. Against a modern army with aircraft and armoured vehicles, Mukhtar fights a guerrilla campaign from the desert: ambushes, rapid withdrawals, no fixed position to bomb. The Italians respond with concentration camps, barbed wire barriers, and aerial bombardment of civilian populations. Mukhtar refuses to negotiate terms.

Quinn plays him as a grey-bearded schoolteacher who happens to be immovable — not a war hero in the Hollywood mould but a principled man of faith who chose his ground. Produced on a budget exceeding $35 million with John Gielgud and Irene Papas in supporting roles, the film is one of the rare large-scale war pictures that gives the colonised side a full human portrait. Watch Lion of the Desert (1981) online on iFILM.