Black Girl (60th Anniversary)

Director Ousmane Sembène is often called the father of African cinema, and with Black Girl he created one of his foundational films. In the story of Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who goes to work for a French couple, Sembène paints a precise and devastating portrait of exploitation disguised as goodwill. To mark the film’s 60th anniversary, Black Girl will be shown twice at Cinecitta.

His restrained visual style and elliptical narrative structure turn everyday gestures into accusations, showing how identity can be erased even within the most domestic spaces. Sixty years later, the film’s moral force remains just as urgent, precisely because Sembène reveals how colonial power relations do not disappear with independence, but continue to shape language, labour, ownership, and the intimate structures of everyday life.