Sembène’s second film was the first ever in the Wolof language, a major step toward the realisation of his dream of creating cinema by, about, and for Africans. After jobless Ibrahim Dieng receives a money order for 25,000 francs, news of his windfall spreads among his neighbours, who flock to him for loans even as he finds his attempts to cash the order stymied in a maze of bureaucracy. One of Sembène’s most coruscating, funny, and indignant films, Mandabi, an adaptation of the director’s own novella, is a bitterly ironic depiction of a society scarred by colonialism and plagued by corruption, greed, and poverty.

Screening as part of the Ousmane Sembène: The Father of African Cinema season.