Out of the Archive: A Global Lens
Arrive hungry at 6:15pm for a pre-screening meal catered by Valéries French Cooking | Post-screening discussion with Anny Curtius
"Bitterly insightful, artistically freewheeling."—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
A furious howl of resistance against racist oppression, the debut from Mauritanian director Med Hondo is a bitterly funny, stylistically explosive attack on Western capitalism and the legacy of colonialism. Laced with deadly irony and righteous anger, the film follows a starry-eyed immigrant as he leaves West Africa and journeys to Paris in search of a job and cultural enrichment—but soon discovers a hostile society in which his very presence elicits fear and resentment. Drawing on the freewheeling stylistic experimentation of the French New Wave, Hondo deploys a dizzying array of narrative and stylistic techniques—animation, docudrama, dream sequences, musical numbers, folklore, slapstick comedy, agitprop—to create a revolutionary landmark of political cinema and a shattering vision of awakening black consciousness.
