The Cinematheque

“A masterpiece of African cinema, a trenchant cultural document, and a wonderful, healing comic drama … That he takes a touchy subject like conflicts between Muslims and Christians and treats it with humour and wisdom is a measure of Sembène’s artistic stature … His wit is sublime.”

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

Ousmane Sembène’s collaborators have suggested that Guelwaar is the film the director was most proud of; for a time, having considered retirement, it was to have stood as his final statement. Through the absence left by the recently deceased activist Pierre Henri Thioune (given the title of Guelwaar, or ​“noble one”), Sembène examines Senegal’s faultlines of religions, generations, genders, and incompatible dreams of the country’s future. The film begins as a tragicomedy—Guelwaar’s body has disappeared, through either bureaucratic malfeasance or the morgue’s honest mistake. This local error becomes a microcosmic religious battle over land and law, and culminates in scenes that resemble Sembène’s preferred form of public engagement: a face-to-face confrontation in which titles and trappings slip away to reveal a common human cause. Though Sembène claimed his starting point for Guelwaar was, like Black Girl, a minor news item, the film points to the legacy of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso who was assassinated in 1987.

In Wolof and French with English subtitles

“[A] lean and eloquent masterwork … If a film won’t matter on a fundamental level to his countrymen, as films rarely matter here [in North America], Sembène won’t make it.”

Michael Atkinson, Film Comment

“[A story] of force and lucidity … Sembène’s exposition, which stands in contrast to the style of most American and European movies, deserves to be called Homeric.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader