Ceddo

Directed by Ousmane Sembène

Produced by Filmi Domirev, Ministère de la Coopération

A historically grounded, intellectually rigorous examination of cultural and religious collision in 17th-century Senegal, where a people's struggle to preserve tradition against competing faiths and colonial forces becomes a meditation on identity, autonomy, and the cost of cultural erasure.

The Ceddo people try to preserve their traditional African culture against the onslaught of Islam, Christianity, and the slave trade. When King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo kidnap his daughter, Princess Dior Yacine, to protest their forcible conversion to Islam.