Just like any teenag­er the young Egypt­ian Abdo is in search for his iden­ti­ty. One dif­fer­ence is, how­ev­er, that his coming of age hap­pens to be in the midst of the Egypt rev­o­lu­tion: a time of bloody hos­til­i­ties. Abdo finds his mis­sion in street fights and soccer sta­di­ums. On the Tahrir square he is a con­vinced rev­o­lu­tion­ist, while in the sta­di­um he joins the world­wide ultra-move­ment. But what hap­pens to the youth­ful striv­ing for change when there is no point in any­thing, the rev­o­lu­tion has come to an end and soccer is banned? Abdo also is an enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur film maker. His camera makes us wit­ness street­fights as well as his every­day life, show­ing home­less people, under­ground trav­el­ers or garbage col­lec­tors. His video diary gives the viewer insight into Abdo’s life, who grows up in the tur­moil of the rev­o­lu­tion. The impact of the Arabic spring on his indi­vid­ual story exem­pli­fies how
the rad­i­cal changes in soci­ety affect his generation.

In his pio­neer­ing film the great Sene­galese author and direc­tor explores the com­plex dynam­ics of the imme­di­ate post-colo­nial period through the simple, dev­as­tat­ing story of a young woman. Dioua­na lives in Dakar and works as nanny for a rich French family. When her employ­ers move back to France, they take Dioua­na with the. While she looks for­ward to a new cos­mopoli­tan lifestyle, she soon real­izes what it means to be an African. She is like a piece of prop­er­ty in the hands of her employ­ers – the black girl who belongs to…

LA NOIRE DE… is con­sid­ered the first sub-saha­ran film by an African film­mak­er to receive inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. It won the Prix Jean Vigo at Cannes as well as many other awards. While it has its own unique style, it draws much inspi­ra­tion from French New Wave, with bril­liant black & white images and an uncon­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive. The main actress Thérèse M’Bissine Diop later said that she was social­ly ostra­cized by people in Sene­gal and even her own family for having played in the film.