Xala

• Seune Samb
• Myriam Niang
• Thierno Leye
• Douta Seck
• Younousse Seye

Xala is a feature film by the Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembene from the year 1975. It is a film adaptation of his eponymous novel of 1973. Xala is a Wolof word meaning "curse". Premiere of the film was in July 1975 at the International Film Festival Moscow. On German television, the film was shown for the first time on March 26, 1976 in ARD.

Action

The film is set in Senegal after completion of the French occupation in which the upper classes of the country has more power than before, but has not changed much for the general population. Protagonist of the story is the minister and businessman El Hadji Abdou Kader, who can afford to have several wives, which according to tradition is still legal. When he married his third wife, he is occupied with an old Senegalese curse that makes him impotent and ashamed him on the wedding night. He goes unsuccessfully in search of healing, first with a modern physician, and later also in traditional medicine men (using "witch powers " ) and with the time dwindles also be social standing and he is finally after the loss of his political office and his company a beggar.

Interpretation

Xala is a satire on modern African bourgeoisie. The French colonial period has ended, but for the majority of the locals is with the political change no change their circumstances occurred. Only the white elite has been replaced by a handful of new African rulers. They are the winners of the independence of Senegal. The fruitless search of the protagonist for a cure for his impotence is a metaphor for the inability to attain liberation, by relying as Africans to Western technology and bureaucratic structures. Sembene himself spoke of the irony of a hit by the curse of past African modernity in which the failure also means political impotence.