Available to rent for $8.99
April 2 - 29
Directed by Ousmane Sembène
1968, Senegal 92 min,
Wolof and French with Subtitles
This title is available to rent via Cinematheque at Home for $8.99. This is not only an opportunity for our patrons to see new cinema, but is an important way that they can continue to support independent film during this pandemic with 50% of all sales supporting our theatre.
This second feature by Ousmane Sembène was the first movie ever made in the Wolof language—a major step toward the realization of the trailblazing Senegalese filmmaker’s dream of creating a cinema by, about, and for Africans. After jobless Ibrahima Dieng receives a money order for 25,000 francs from a nephew who works in Paris, news of his windfall quickly spreads among his neighbors, who flock to him for loans even as he finds his attempts to cash the order stymied in a maze of bureaucracy, and new troubles rain down on his head. One of Sembène’s most coruscatingly funny and indignant films, Mandabi—an adaptation of a novella by the director himself—is a bitterly ironic depiction of a society scarred by colonialism and plagued by corruption, greed, and poverty.
