Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest, most groundbreaking filmmakers in the history of cinema, an acclaimed novelist, and the most renowned African director of the twentieth century. Black Girl was his brilliant, blistering debut. Released in 1966, it won the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival that year. The film is about a young Senegalese woman, played powerfully by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family as a nanny, but quickly discovers that life in their apartment is a prison, both figuratively and literally; but it is also a searing, nuanced critique of the lingering colonialism in the supposedly postcolonial world. Vlad Dima's study of Black Girl argues that the film helped to map the future of African cinema. He situates it within its postcolonial context, considering its adaptation from the eponymous short story first published in 1962. He examines the performances of Mbissine Thérèse Diop (Diouana), Anne-Marie Jelinek
