Shortly after the end of colonial rule, the young Senegalese Diouana finds work as a babysitter for a French couple in Dakar. The work lets her dream of social rise and she immediately accepts, when the couple offers further work in Côte d’Azur. But Diouanas hope of a new life fades quickly after her arrival. The couple treats her like a slave and presents her as an exotic object to their guests. Imprisoned in a foreign country Diouna desperately tries to emancipate her in her exploitive situation.
Director Ousmane Sembène began his carrier as a writer and activist, before he dedicated himself to cinema. His film-debut Black Girl shows without mercy, how colonial power structures persisted after the Senegalese independence. As voice of the supressed his work reached international attention and brought Sembène in his home country the surname “Father of African cinema”. We will show the film together with the short documentary À propos de Nice by Jean Vigos, which critisizes the class differences in the holyday destination of Nizza.
Mischa Haberthür
