• Eliel Peterson

Ousmane Sembène’s and Souleymane Cissé’s debut features end with women who choose death. What is more uncomfortable to confront: their deaths, or the conditions that made life itself unbearable?

• Fatoumata Bah

African postcolonial cinema serves as a mirror, revealing the limits of escape — whether through migration or personal defiance — and exposing the tensions between dreams and reality.

• Chérif Keïta

How a Senegalese trade unionist inspired one of the continent’s greatest filmmakers.

• Amber Sweat

In ‘Black Girl’ (1966) and ‘Cuties’ (2020), M'Bissine T. Diop is a cautionary figure who warns of colonialism's wounds and afterlives for Black girl belonging in the present day.

• Tsogo Kupa

If someone had to hold the title of father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembéne would be the most compelling candidate.

• Delali Adogla-Bessa

To be African means at some point to desire to leave. African cinema can provide solace for our tortured relationship to the West and our own continent.

• Suvij Sudershan

Working-class men try unsuccessfully to integrate themselves into new economies in the films of Ousmane Sembene and Mrinal Sen.

• Noah Tsika

An interview with Samba Gadjigo, the late Ousmane Sembene’s longtime friend and official biographer about the resurgence of Sembene’s work.

• Christian Niedan

An Interview with Abderrahmane Sissako, director of films like 'La Vie Sur Terre,' 'Rostov-Luanda,' 'Waiting for Happiness' and 'Bamako.'

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Roger Ebert revolutionized television film criticism in the United States with his engaging discussions alongside Gene Siskel. He loved African film.

• Tom Devriendt

• Sean Henry Jacobs

• Basia Cummings

Ousmane Sembene's "Xala" (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal.

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Scorcese not only restores prints of African cinema classics, he also counts Ousmane Sembene as one of cinema's greatest directors.