Essential World Cinema: 5 Best Senegalese Films

Xala

Ousmane Sembène was a writer first and a film-maker second, but in both cases the statements he made with his work shook Africa to its very core. He was a rebel in many regards and the controversy surrounding much of his output testifies to that. While most of his films deal very directly with their framing issues, Xala is a satire and a rather ingenious one. The first scene shows a group of wealthy white businessmen being forced out of a commerce in Dakar by native Africans, only to be replaced with African businessmen just as corrupt and insipid as their predecessors. One man in particular enjoys the spotlight, El Hadji, who boasts of his upcoming marriage to his third wife (an addition, not a replacement) and marks it as a symbol of power.

Things all seem to be going rather well for this unpleasant gentleman, he’s got more money than he knows what to do with, enough wives to start a band and plenty of children to neglect and abuse. Things take a turn however when he reaches the night of his wedding and fails to rise to the occasion. I’m not kidding, that’s literally the premise of the film: old polygamous high-roller can’t get it up. It turns out that he has had a curse called a ‘Xala’ placed on him and little Hadji will remain dormant until it’s lifted. He begins to seek out ways to alleviate it and discover who cursed him in the first place, the prime suspects being his quietly disdainful first wife, his loudly jealous second or his disapproving daughter. The film is essentially a statement about the impotence of the Senegalese leadership after gaining independence as well as being a hilariously well-noted ‘fuck you’ to the corrupt and greedy facets of the nation’s society.

Xala is the very best kind of satire, the message is clear and the delivery method is amusing enough to be both engaging and thought-provoking. You can simply enjoy it at a fundamental level easily enough, but if you examine the intricacies it becomes that much more clear what a deep film it really is.

The Pirogue

One of the things that always riles me when I hear ill-informed complaints of immigrants stealing jobs, homes and generally getting in the way of national sanctity (besides all the other cast-iron arguments you can levy against such claims) is that there’s never any consideration for just how desperate a situation often has to be to force a person to immigrate. Most immigrants aren’t leaving because they fancy a change of scenery, they’re leaving because they see no alternative, to the point at which they often risk their lives to do this. Every year appalling amounts of Africans die during doomed voyages to Europe on boats that are in no way suited for long distance travel. They are beaten by storms, constricted by heat and often run out of supplies long before their destination drifts into view.

Moussa Toure’s The Pirogue follows one of these boats as it carries a cargo of desperate Senegalese migrants away from their over-fished, undernourished and desolate homeland (perhaps illustrating why this is one of only a handful of notable Senegalese films to have come out in the past decade). The titular pirogue is captained by a fisherman who agrees to take the week-long trip to Spain in order to earn some money for his family, but his benefactor is deceitful, his passengers are unruly and his task is colossal. This film is a beautifully shot, stunningly realised tale of extreme measures and dangerous waters, as the small boat is caught in the middle of a storm so fierce it would make Poseidon bite his lip. The passengers are a colourful, varied group with the stowaway and lone female Nafy being the most interesting. It’s a hard, challenging watch, but it concerns issues that everyone should understand.