Synopsis
Eager to find a better life abroad, a Senegalese woman becomes a mere governess to a family in southern France, suffering from discrimination and marginalization.
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Cast
- Mbissine Thérèse DiopDiouana
- Anne-Marie JelinekMadame
- Robert FontaineMonsieur
- Nar SeneDiouana's Boyfriend
- Ibrahima BoyBoy with Mask
- Bernard DelbardYoung Male Guest
- Nicole DonatiYoung Female Guest
- Raymond LemeriOld Male Guest
- Suzanne LemeriOld Female Guest
- PhilippeCouple's Oldest Son
Recommendations
- 100
The Seattle Times
It’s a remarkable personal-is-political drama, set in barely postcolonial Senegal and France. - 88
Slant Magazine
Decolonization in Black Girl isn't only a myth, but also a myth that actually strengthens the consumerist caste systems. - 80
Village Voice
Formally spartan, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (1966) is dense with cool fury. - 70
The New Yorker
Ousmane Sembène, in his first feature film, from 1966—which is also widely considered the first feature made by an African—distills a vast range of historical crises and frustrated ambitions into an intimate, straightforwardly realistic drama. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
The weakness of Black Girl is in its slow, journeyman style; one feels that Sembene learned filmmaking by making this film. It also suffers from a kind of primitive naturalism, as if the script were by James T. Farrell out of Theodore Dreiser. Every motive is spelled out in unnecessary detail, and little attempt is made to get into the minds of the characters. - 60
The New York Times
[Mr. Sembène's] sadly pensive story of a young Dakar girl hired as a governess for a white couple's three children appears unevenly weighted in favor of Mr. Sembène's dolorous thesis.
