Masks are required in public spaces at FilmScene in following CDC guidance for current risk levels.

Learn about FilmScene's comfort and safety policies here!

Presented by the Bijou Film Board, and as part of Bijou's Horizons program.
FREE for UI students (present student ID at box office) and $7.00 for the general public!

"Sembene's debut feels as timely today as it did half a century ago... As Westerners, we begin the movie thinking we're watching Africans, but we realize that Africans like Sembene have been watching us, too, and know us far better than we know them."—Johbn Powers, NPR's Fresh Air

"Fifty-one years after its initial release, this seminal film remains hauntingly relevant."—Allison N. Conner, Bitch Media

Ousmane Sembène, one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived and the most internationally renowned African director of the twentieth century, made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl (La noire de . . .). Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a figurative and literal prison—into a complex, layered critique on the lingering colonialist mindset of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in or to participate in this program, please contact the Bijou Film Board in advance (@bijoufilm on Facebook or at (319) 335-3041).