Efie Gallery and Bootleg Griot present a monthly film programme in the Rekord Gallery tracing the intertwined histories of African and Arab liberation cinema. Through a carefully curated selection of films, the series considers how revolutionary aesthetics, political movements, and diasporic imaginations have shaped and continue to shape the language of cinema across continents.

Xala (1975 · Directed by Ousmane Sembène)

About the film

Ousmane Sembène’s Xala is a sharp satirical portrait of power in the immediate aftermath of independence. When a prosperous businessman and newly appointed official is struck by an affliction on the night of his third marriage, his private crisis quickly becomes public, exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of a rising elite.

With precision and wit, Sembène uses the domestic sphere as a lens onto the broader political order, tracing how new forms of authority replicate the very logics they claim to replace. Xala remains an incisive work of postcolonial cinema, balancing comedy with critique in a film that is as entertaining as it is unsparing.