Directed by Ousmane Sembène

“If Africans do not tell their own stories, Africa will soon disappear,” declared Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese cinematic revolutionary whose career-long project to illuminate the lives of the marginalized made him the continent’s most influential and widely acclaimed director. A manual laborer turned union activist turned acclaimed writer turned filmmaker, Sembène saw cinema as the ultimate vehicle for his searing social critiques, delivering caustic indictments of colonialism, ruling-class corruption, religion, and the patriarchy in landmark works like BLACK GIRL (recently named one of the greatest films of all time in Sight and Sound magazine’s poll), MANDABI, and XALA. Blending elements of social realism, expressionism, satire, folklore, and the West African griot tradition, his radical, empathetic films created a new cinematic language of resistance.