Sembène, Ousmane

b. 1 January 1923, Ziguinchor, Senegal
d. 9 June 2007, Yoff, Dakar, Senegal

Ousmane Sembène is primarily remembered for his milestone contribution to African film history. His early films represent a linguistic and cultural shift from telling the stories of Africans in colonial countries by colonial filmmakers or filmmakers who were descendants of colonials in their colonial languages to telling homegrown stories by Indigenous African filmmakers in Indigenous African languages. As the first to step behind the camera and achieve this shift in the history of African cinema, Sembène became known as the literal “father of African film”.¹

Nonetheless, his cinema deserves appreciation from other perspectives. He is more than just ‘the father of African film’ and should be acknowledged as a great filmmaker in his own right. After all, his contribution to film history is greater than just a linguistic and cultural shift in the region’s represented cinematic language and imagery.

Sembène’s work mostly stands out for its extreme elements compared to his cinematic peers. His films often explore radical global humanist experiences, earning him a place in the film history canon as a filmmaker committed to depicting various forms of liberation. As such, he is widely regarded as a ‘revolutionary cinema’ filmmaker, one whose films are political and directly influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology, though at the same time, they are not to be considered part of “social realism”, nor films which he wanted to be considered the work of a filmmaker concerned with generating a “cinema of signs”.² In this instance, interpretation is perhaps best for the audience to determine where his films truly align.

Considering these auteurist characteristics of having and using a unique ‘voice’ as an author of his films, Sembène can be compared to his African peers Djibril Diop Mambéty and Souleymane Cissé, whose films often explore African perspectives on dreams and nightmares while challenging audience expectations with experimental techniques.³ Likewise, Sembène also shares thematic concerns with ‘Third Cinema’ filmmakers such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Mrinal Sen,⁴ who gave a voice to underrepresented regional groups they associated with, and with the morality-heavy European directors such as Claire Denis and Michael Haneke, whose works have frequently examined the impact that class, violence, and extreme ideology have had on traumatised individuals.⁵

As a film storyteller, Sembène ultimately invites his viewers to disregard the conventional social expectations of safety they feel or expect when they watch his cinema.⁶ In Sembène’s worlds, whether it be the realist communities he depicts or the dreamscapes he constructs, audiences witness the surreal experiences of the African men, women, or children in the colonised or post-colonised environment. The African depicted in his films is always an outsider of sorts, even when in their homeland, as they are subjected to the pressures of colonialism. This commitment to producing “socially relevant art” was drenched in “a web of contradictions” for Sembène, as his films were only viable due to the financial support he was able to attain from two key French companies, whose wealth in the region was ultimately a profit from their colonial business, which he was criticising.⁷

Sembène’s career as a storyteller began with writing. His debut novel, The Black Docker, first published in 1956, focuses on a docker who is obsessed with becoming a writer. Sembène’s first novel, which is eventually published through good connections, is stripped of his name.⁸ Whilst Sembène’s novel and films bear his name, one might compare Diaw Falla, the lead character of The Black Docker, with the early part of Sembène’s filmography, which often featured unnamed people as his performers. One of Sembène’s tools as a storyteller in this instance is the so-called anonymity of the African, whose representation to a Western audience is that of an uncredited figure who appears in photographic material as an image of African people.

This is further enhanced by Sembène’s documentary-style filming and formalist editorial techniques. As he explores controversial themes – ranging from disability, race, and class oppression to the ownership and control of bodies, particularly through his focus on female genital mutilation (FGM) – his unnamed African characters become powerful voices of African culture for both local and global audiences.

After all, Sembène always considered himself a writer first and foremost. He only moved into the medium of film due to its ability to speak to the Indigenous communities he was representing — as its visual and auditory language, which connected with the importance of the oral tradition of West Africa, could side-step the complication of the high illiteracy rate prevalent in the region in the period in which he produced films.⁹ 

By using film as his medium to share stories, Sembène, as a storyteller, effectively combined the cultural tradition of oral storytelling with the contemporary cinematic language of his time while giving a literal voice to the anonymous figures he depicted. This allowed Sembène to express himself with a tool that his African cultural peers would understand and appreciate, reflecting their world and shared experiences. This is most heightened when auditory communication appears in his films, such as voice-over narration, drums, singing, and public debates.

Ultimately, one could argue that Sembène’s most significant contribution to the global cinema canon is his masterful application of the ‘cinéma engagé’ ideology.¹⁰ His films serve as militant messages deeply rooted in the political and social militancy of the post–World War II era. Whether through fleeting scenes or the central arcs of his narratives, he directly challenges audiences with pointed, provocative questions.

These moments of ‘cinema engagé’ can be as direct as the core arc of Ceddo (The Outsiders, Ousmane Sembène, 1977), with “what is the impact of religious conversion?” – or as fleeting as a moment in Borom Sarret (Cart Driver, Ousmane Sembène, 1963), where a disabled beggar is ignored, prompting the question: “how do disabled Africans survive in the post-colonial Senegal with no support?” The questions Sembène asks, whether answered or unanswered, render his voice as a storyteller the most vocal speaker of the unheard Africans who have seen the world shift from colonialism to post-colonialism, a voice he brings to life through the key perspectives of an individual, a community or a group of people.

Sembène on set with the cast of Xala, Dakar, 1975

Empathy in Sembène’s Cinema

With his first two film efforts, Borom Sarret and La noire de… (Black Girl, Ousmane Sembène, 1966), Sembène presents stories told from the perspective of the French language. In both instances, a narrator’s voice is used. 

In this instance, the character narrates their experience, observations, and internal conscious thoughts. From the filmic perspective, these thoughts represent those of the ‘everyman’, or at least an African everyman/everywoman who has lived through colonialism, religious conflicts, and a change in lifestyle due to their place in society. This perspective invites empathy from the audience, as it allows them to inhabit the mindset of an individual.

Borom Sarret is considered an essential piece of film history. It is often considered the first African film made by a Black African filmmaker, one carrying a strong political message against its contemporary audience, “who believed that independence had solved all the problems of the African people.”¹¹ 

This message is embedded in the film in particular scenario-based instances, whereby the lead character, a horse-and-cart taxi driver, travels from the native quarter to the new city, encountering and witnessing the impact of segregation and economic systems at play. The sights he observes become our own, through a documentary-like observational camera, which captures the shift from bare feet to automobiles, unemployment to leisure activities, and the safety of a community to the guarded protection of police presence.

The most direct instance of this messaging is through the dubbed narration. Sembène uses his cart driver to share ideological thoughts, such as “the son inherited from his father, nowadays the father inherits from his son”, which gradually builds the perspective from which Sembène speaks – that being the voice of a socialist filmmaker.

Furthermore, there is also the filmic device of changing the speakers’ voices. As this grassroots film does not use synchronous sound, this forces a mismatch of speaker and sound, which, to a viewer, removes the ability for the intended meaning of the scenes to be determined by untrained actors present in the film. Sembène’s characters, in this instance, say exactly as he wishes.

With La noire de… Sembène’s lens shifts to the displaced African in a white home. Leaving the rural locale, Diouana is presented as an ‘everywoman’ in the context of an African who has left the traditional African lifestyle. Under the employment of a French couple, she is subject to racist exoticisation and the social restrictions placed on her by her white employers. By placing a Black woman in a white family’s home, this film allows Sembène to begin a theme he would later return to: the importance of women in Africa.

Ultimately, with this ‘slave-like’ style of employment, Diouana would eventually seek emancipation. Despite the end of colonial power in Senegal, her circumstances have not improved in this instance – and perhaps are even worse, as her exploitation is now legal and deemed morally ‘correct’ by the film’s contemporary audiences. As suicide becomes her only option, Sembène takes away Diouana’s ‘living’ voice, and allows her the ability to reclaim her African body and claim her right to end her life.¹²

Arguably, Sembène, in this instance, feeds on Diouana’s exploitation as she becomes an instrument for us to witness the mistreatment of Black Africans under a white household. Much like with his later film Camp de Thiaroye (The Camp at Thiaroye, Ousmane Sembène, 1988), the individuals shown in Sembène’s films are often narrative devices with which Sembène can leverage a criticism and indictment of the French colonial system.¹³

By the time his second feature is presented, Sembène has begun his shift towards an ensemble cast. While Mandabi (The Money Order, Ousmane Sembène, 1968) is built mainly around Ibrahim Dieng, a single key protagonist, the film allows space for other supporting roles to inhabit their narrative arcs, primarily Dieng’s wives. 

Through its use of Wolof, Mandabi becomes a key chapter in the linguistic shift in film history. Considered by many to be the first feature film to feature an African language¹⁴ (whilst also being made by an African filmmaker who spoke the native language), the film allows a voice to an individual previously unheard in cinema. Like Borom Sarret, the film explores a division between the native quarter and the city setting. However, the main difference between the protagonists in these two films is their use of a native and a foreign tongue. Their outcomes, shaped by bureaucratic and colonial systems of power, are nearly identical—misfortune befalls the Black African in a world designed to exploit them. As observers of this misfortune, we must choose between empathy and judgment.

Emitaï

With Emitaï (Ousmane Sembène, 1971) a shift occurs in the cinema of Sembène. His films, primarily inspired by the works of Soviet cinema filmmakers and Italian neorealists, now shift further into this realm, focusing on the/a ‘community’ rather than the/a ‘single individual’.¹⁵

These films present a broader scope that attempts to encompass the Third Cinema movement. With the so-called Third Cinema movement, Sembène brings attention to the social and political battle for progress, rather than the other more palatable modes of entertainment (‘first cinema’) and art (‘the second cinema’).¹⁶

As Emitaï’s groups face a struggle of being the oppressed (the African) and the oppressor (the white Frenchman), primarily built around the exploitation of an Indigenous community being made to hand over their sons, rice and dignity, our empathy becomes a forced perspective. Unlike Sembène’s previous films, in this instance we are no longer placed in a position where judgment can be applied, mainly because the people inhabiting a ‘good’ or ‘evil’ position are clearly defined. 

In Emitaï, Ousmane Sembène draws a poignant parallel between two shifts in leadership: the village elders’ farewell to their key speaker and the imposition of French colonial authority, symbolised by the replacement of Vichy posters with those of General de Gaulle. An interrupted funeral march marks the former, while the latter is a stark display of colonial power. This juxtaposition invites the audience to reflect on the superficiality of colonial governance and its enduring impact on the colonised.

Sembène further deepens this critique by immersing the audience in the spiritual and cultural life of the Diola people. A psychedelic, red-tinted dream sequence offers a window into their inner workings, contrasting the harshness of colonial impositions with the richness of Black African culture. This empathetic portrayal not only highlights the community’s resilience but also challenges viewers to engage with the complexities of colonialism beyond mere judgment.¹⁷

As Sembène’s oeuvre unfolds, his scope further widens. He often highlights the importance of women in creating the African legacy and its modernity. With films such as La noire de…, Ceddo, Faat Kiné (Ousmane Sembène, 2001), and Moolaadé (Magical Protection, Ousmane Sembène, 2004), Sembène presents female characters whose intelligence and business acumen surpass those of their male counterparts. Their fight for liberation is portrayed as even more significant in terms of achievement and evidence.¹⁸

Moolaadé

This focus on women is not isolated but central to Sembène’s broader cinematic project: a commitment to telling ‘real’ stories that expose the ongoing struggles within African societies. What may initially appear as films with singular messages reveal, on closer inspection, a deep engagement with the social and political tensions of contemporary Africa. His female protagonists often serve as narrative devices to explore these tensions.

More broadly, Sembène’s cinema functions as evidence of postcolonial African structures. His work addresses the failures of leadership, the persistence of colonial legacies, and the conflict between tradition and progress. In Xala (Temporary Sexual Impotence, Ousmane Sembène, 1975), the corrupt post-independence political power is laid bare; in Ceddo, religious authoritarianism and cultural erasure are met with resistance; and in Moolaadé, the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) becomes a central symbol of patriarchal control and generational trauma. Sembène exposes the contradictions at the heart of his contemporary African identity through political satire, religious critique, and cultural defiance. His films ultimately challenge audiences to confront these systems of oppression to understand the dynamic clashes of political, spiritual, or social factors behind these fights for resistance, recognition, and transformation.

Ultimately, Sembène’s cinema features various groups of ‘the other’ that one could explore. These often appear as archetypes in his films, such as a community leader, a businessman or businesswoman, people who are educated and those who are perceived as being uneducated, children and the role they play in becoming the next generation, or those who are even further marginalised—the beggars and the disabled. 

Sembène’s dense layering of representations in his films means that only with repeated viewings can one fully unlock these different perspectives, highlighting his most impressive skill as a director: an empathiser. With his film’s subjects, Sembène always invites empathy for his Africans and speaks of empathy for Africa with his audience.

Selected Filmography

• Borom Sarret (Cart Driver, 1963)
• La noire de… (Black Girl, 1966)
• Mandabi (The Money Order, 1968)
• Emitaï (1971)
• Xala (Temporary Sexual Impotence, 1975)
• Ceddo (The Outsiders) – 1977
• Camp de Thiaroye (The Camp at Thiaroye, 1988)
• Faat Kiné (2001)
• Moolaadé (Magical Protection, 2004)

Endnotes