Camp de Thiaroye

A Senegalese platoon of soldiers from the French Free Army are returned from combat in France and held for a temporary time in a military encampment with barbed wire fences and guard towers in the desert. Among their numbers are Sergeant Diatta, the charismatic leader of the troop who was educated in Paris and has a French wife and child, and Pays, a Senegalese soldier left in a state of shock from the war and concentration camps and who can only speak in guttural screams and grunts.

All is well until the soldiers start to complain about the food offered in the camp, to which the French commander says he will do nothing about, as meat is reserved for white officers. To kill time, Sergeant Diatta goes into town to find a brothel, and is thrown out of one because he is African; he is subsequently found by American troops, who beat and capture him. As revenge, the Senegalese troops capture a white American soldier and an exchange is made between the two prisoners, and the Americans threaten to level the camp and kill everyone.

As the Senegalese troops are about to be transferred out of the camp, they learn they will only be given half the pay for their service as the French troops are unfairly converting French francs to Senegalese francs at half the rate to save money. The Senegalese troops capture the camp and take a French general hostage, beginning a mutiny. The mutiny ends when the general gives them his word that they will be given their proper pay. That night, they dance and celebrate. At about 3 am, Pays is in a watch tower and sees tanks approaching the camp, and wakes up the other soldiers, but is unable to tell them what is happening; they think he is saying that Nazis are invading the camp and dismiss him as being crazy. An hour or so later, the French tanks open fire on the camp, killing Diatta, Pays and the rest of the Senegalese platoon.

• Sidiki Bakaba
• Hamed Camara
• Ismaël Lô
• Philippe Chamelat
• Marthe Mercadier
• Casimir Zoba, aka Zao
• Jean-Daniel Simon

Apart from Sidiki Bakaba and Mohamed Camara—along with a few French actors, a German, and an American—the cast consists almost entirely of amateurs.^[7]

The film is similar to an earlier work by Sembène, Emitaï (1971), which references the Effok massacre—an event in which a village was destroyed by colonial forces in 1943. The underlying aim is the same: to create a historical film that denounces colonialism.^[8][9]

Thierno Faty Sow decided to write the film after his father recounted his own experiences from 1944, when he was working as a postal inspector: he had written a piece for a newspaper and was asked to retract an article in which he criticized the colonists; subsequently transferred to a remote part of Senegal, he resigned and was not reinstated until 1951.^[10]

According to Cécile Van den Avenne, the screenplay uses its characters as archetypes, a choice that serves its political message; she cites the example of Staff Sergeant Diatta—a man who is highly acculturated yet out of place in both French and African societies, and consequently vulnerable.^[9]

Ousmane Sembène trained at film schools in the USSR during the 1960s. In Camp de Thiaroye, two scenes reference the Soviet cinema classic Battleship Potemkin: the scene where the tirailleurs protest the very poor quality of the food evokes a similar scene that sparks the mutiny on the Russian battleship, while the final massacre scene recalls the moment the Potemkin mutineers fire their cannons. These two references serve to frame the historical episode of the Thiaroye massacre as a precursor to the independence movements.^[11]

Several elements of the film diverge from historical reality as it was understood when the screenplay was written or the film produced. Sabrina Parent argues that one must look beyond mere entertainment value or intellectual dishonesty, viewing certain scenes in Camp de Thiaroye as aesthetic choices^[11] and emphasizing the meticulous research Ousmane Sembène conducted prior to making the film. For instance, critic Kenneth Harrow faults the final scene for obscuring the faces of the perpetrators of the massacre (who, until the 2010s, were believed to be tirailleurs who had not mutinied); he accuses Sembène of a Manichaean portrayal—contrasting "good" colonized subjects with "bad" colonizers—thereby oversimplifying the situation. Yet, throughout the film, we see unarmed tirailleurs awaiting demobilization being guarded by armed tirailleurs, and armed tirailleurs threatening their protesting comrades on an officer's orders. Sembène therefore does not conceal the various attitudes adopted by the tirailleurs; indeed, he seeks to highlight them as part of his condemnation of colonialism—a system that places colonized people in precisely such untenable situations. Finally, the image of tanks firing machine guns into the night serves as a dramatic element, illustrating the disproportionate nature of the colonial authorities' response and the dehumanization at work in the colonies.^[11]

The continental premiere took place in Dakar on December 22, 1988, attended by the President of the Republic of Senegal, Abdou Diouf; the President of the National Assembly, Abdoul Aziz Ndaw; and the Minister of Culture, Robert Sagna.^[12] The film was subsequently released in Senegalese cinemas to great success.^[13][14]

Although it won the Special Jury Prize at the 1988 Venice Film Festival and the UNICEF Prize, the film was not released in French cinemas, earning it a reputation as a censored film (despite being shown at festivals and in occasional screenings).^[9] Since 1989, there has been speculation that the French state exerted pressure to have it pulled from theaters.^[10] The film was released in Italy in September 1988 in the 1988 Venice Film Festival, and on May 26, 1989 for the general release.

Two organizations are listed as distributors of the film: Médiathèque des Trois Mondes (M3M) for France, and New Yorker Films for the United States.^[15]

The day after the film's premiere—attended by the President of the Republic, the President of the National Assembly, and the Minister of Communication—the newspaper Le Soleil ran the headline: "Grand Premiere of Camp de Thiaroye: A Spotlight on Oblivion." Critics praised the diverse psychological profiles of the characters; the film also established a parallel between the Thiaroye massacre and Nazi concentration camps. It achieved great success with both the public and critics in Senegal.^[16] During the first screening, the French ambassador to Dakar walked out of the theater.^[16]

Although not released in France, the film immediately provoked a reaction from institutions keen to reiterate the official version (that of the French army) of the Thiaroye massacre. The Inspectorate of Marine Troops (formerly colonial troops) of the French army issued a statement recalling that the officers had responded to a mutiny and that the massacre had produced a "salutary effect," restoring the tirailleurs to obedience. Meanwhile, the French embassy commissioned the priest Joseph Roger de Benoist—a historian at the Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire (IFAN)—to set the official record straight, providing him with access to certain archives. He published an article in Le Soleil on February 21, 1989, reiterating the key points of the version established by the army in 1944: the maintenance of discipline, the authenticity of the archives, and a death toll of 35.^[16]

When the film was screened in a small Paris cinema in 1998, L'Humanité, La Vie, Témoignage chrétien, and Le Canard enchaîné published favorable reviews, while the rest of the press either ignored the film or reacted negatively.^[17]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 5 critics' reviews are positive.^[18]

• Cinema of Senegal