This year marks the hundredth birthday of the prolific Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, deservedly recognized as the “Father of African Cinema.” Despite his reservations against the title that attached itself to him for much of his public life, his devotion toward the people of Senegal — and to the collective flourishing of Africans — places him as one of the most significant filmmakers in the history of cinema.

Sembène was not a storyteller in Africa, but an African storyteller. His life’s work was dedicated to sincerely reflecting the lives of everyday Senegalese people with a consistently critical eye toward capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. The son of a fisherman, he spent his late adolescence and early adulthood as a manual laborer after a premature expulsion from formal schooling, allegedly for raising his hand against a teacher. Sembène would be seventeen when the collaborationist French government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain capitulated to Adolf Hitler. Occupied by US troops, Senegal would escape Vichy rule, but the future auteur would be sent to the front to fight in North Africa — notoriously where black troops faced the brunt of the fire.