Mandabi review – Ousmane Sembène classic about colonialism resonates today

Senegalese feature from 1968 tells story of a simple family man whose life is turned upside down by the money he receives from a nephew in France

Ousmane Sembene, the father of African cinema", tells a tale of Jonsonian bleakness about human nature with his 1968 film Mandabi, or The Money Order, adapted from his own novella and now on rerelease. As with much of the rest of his work, and especially his earlier film Le Noire De... (1966), it is about colonialism and Africa's relationship with France, though a 21st-century audience might specifically read it as a parable of globalisation, and what happens when a poor country exiles its cheap labour to wealthy countries in the expectation of money getting sent home.

Makhouredia Gueye plays Ibrahim: a lazy, conceited man with two wives, Mety (Ynousse N'Diaye) and Aram (Isseu Niang) and seven children in a village outside Dakar, Senegal. The first time we see him, Ibrahim is being shaved by a barber, and getting his gruesome nose hairs trimmed. Later he eats greedily to the point of indigestion and settles down for a nap instead of going to the mosque for prayers; he is always burping, coughing, grimacing, and upon being massaged, appears horribly to break wind.