Sembène’s feature debut transforms a deceptively simple plot – a young Senegalese woman moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a figurative and literal prison – into a complex, layered critique on the lingering colonialist mindset of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement, and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

Borom Sarret (20 mins, 1963), Sembène’s groundbreaking directorial debut, will screen before Black Girl.

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