Death as liberation
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?
2 Article(s) by:
Eliel Peterson
Eliel Peterson is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, and programmer whose work focuses on African and Black diasporic cinema. She is a master’s candidate at New York University, where she studies Black visual culture. Her writing has appeared in Africa Is a Country, Document Journal, and Filmmaker Magazine. She is a member of the 2026 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy.
The sound of what remains
Jean Maxime Baptiste’s latest film listens to how grief and history reverberate across generations in French Guiana.