CAMP DE THIAROYE
80 Years after WWII
French West Africa, 1944: West-African colonial soldiers, former prisoners of war, return from captivity in Europe and are housed in the Thiaroye military encampment in present-day Senegal. When the French colonial administration refuses to pay them their promised compensation, protests erupt. The reaction is swift and brutal: colonial troops and French gendarmes massacre the demonstrators. Forty years later, Ousmane Sembène, himself once a soldier in the French colonial army, re-examines the events for the big screen. CAMP DE THIAROYE was not shown in France until 1998. To this day, it remains one of the few feature films about the Second World War told from an African perspective.
French West Africa, 1944: West-African colonial soldiers, former prisoners of war, return from captivity in Europe and are housed in the Thiaroye military encampment in present-day Senegal. When the French colonial administration refuses to pay them their promised compensation, protests erupt. The reaction is swift and brutal: colonial troops and French gendarmes massacre the demonstrators. Forty years later, Ousmane Sembène, himself once a soldier in the French colonial army, re-examines the events for the big screen. CAMP DE THIAROYE was not shown in France until 1998. To this day, it remains one of the few feature films about the Second World War told from an African perspective.
