Nationality: Immigrant
This recurring cycle is an opportunity to watch or re-watch classics from cinema history, or films representative of certain national cinematographies, trends or eras, on the big screen.
Winner of the Special Prize of the Jury, FESPACO 1976
Presentation of the restored version
Sidi, a Mauritanian worker, is employed in France. Like most immigrant workers, he is employed in the most strenuous and dangerous jobs. Sidi and his comrades are systematically and permanently exploited, both by their bosses and by their own compatriots. But in the face of racism and economic exploitation, immigrant workers band together, organize...
Sidney Sokhona
Sidney Sokhona is a Mauritanian filmmaker and politician. He shot his first feature film, Nationality: Immigrant, from 1972 to 1975 as an immigrant in Paris. The film hybridised documentary and surreal fiction, with Sokhana himself playing the lead role of an immigrant living through a rent strike in the Rue Riquet. He also made a second film, Safrana or Freedom of Speech, in 1977. He wrote on African cinema for Cahiers du Cinéma, arguing that "Africa was colonized, and so is its cinema", and that African filmmakers were beginning "to draw up battle plans for [....] cinematic independence". He then left cinema to devote himself to a political career.
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