La noire de...

Ousmane Sembène / Senegal, France / 1966 / 65 min.

Cast: Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek, Robert Fontaine
Spoken: French / Subtitles: English

The young Senegalese woman Diouana follows her French employers from Dakar to the Côte d’Azur, hoping for a better life. What begins as a dream of freedom and adventure quickly turns into a suffocating reality of exploitation and isolation.

The black-and-white film La Noire de... (1966) is the feature-length debut of Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), often regarded as the father of African cinema. As a writer and filmmaker, he sought to tell stories from an African perspective, aimed at a broad audience. With La Noire de..., he exposes the painful legacy of colonialism and shows how power and racism persist in Sub-Saharan Africa, establishing his reputation as a powerful, politically engaged voice in world cinema