Xala (1975)

Directed by

Ousmane Sembène

Genre

satirical film

Country

Senegal

Runtime

1h 30m

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 44 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A wealthy Senegalese businessman marries a third wife and is struck by a curse of impotence. His efforts to find a cure expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the country's elite.

satiricalabsurdheavycriticalwryuncomfortabledeliberateprovocative

What happens

Xala (pronounced [ˈxɐlɐ], Wolof for "temporary sexual impotence") is a 1975 Senegalese satirical comedy film written and directed by Ousmane Sembène, an adaptation of Sembène's 1973 novel of the same name. It stars Thierno Leye, Seune Samb, Douta Seck, Younousse Sèye, Fatim Diagne, and Myriam Niang. The plot depicts El Hadji, a rich businessman in Senegal, who is cursed with crippling erectile dysfunction upon the day of his marriage to his third wife; that could only be cured by him stripping naked before the lowly of the society and have them spit on him. The film satirizes the corruption in African post-independence governments; El Hadji's impotence symbolizes the failure of such governments to be useful at all. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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