Country:Senegal

Director:Ousmane Sembene

Summary:

Sembene traces the descent of a poor Senegalese Muslim who, upon trying to cash a money-order at his village post office, somehow finds himself pitted against bureaucratic and societal forces. The protagonist, Ibrahim, is a lazy and vain but fundamentally decent man, whose unexpected windfall becomes the catalyst of his downfall - the means by which this simple, more-or-less honest, individual comes face-to-face with the indifference, the corruption of the modern world. Sembene, an observer of human nature, keeps his characters at arms-length, and by watching them from this distance is able to convey their basic equality as creatures trying to survive in a confusing, unfair world.