Review of Mandabi (1968)
Seen in 2025.
Ibrahim has a nephew sweeping the streets of Paris, but Ibrahim is in Senegal, which has been independent from France since 1960. He’s been unemployed for some time and may have been ready for retirement, but he’s not exactly sure how old he is, because he doesn’t have a birth certificate or a national ID. Nevertheless, he’s the man of the clan. When his nephew sends a money order (mandabi), it falls on Ibrahim to collect it. Ibrahim’s sister and his two wives are all just as illiterate as he is, and culturally prohibited from helping him navigate the young nation’s commerce and bureaucracy.
In Denis Diderot’s pre-revolutionary Encyclopédie, a citizen is defined as anyone who follows the laws and enjoys the franchises of a free society. It is with the tone of a disappointed Diderot that Moudoun Faye, playing the postman in this film, addresses Ibrahim in the final scene, a little modernist collapse to crown what is otherwise a highly accessible morality play. The postman speaks for the director of the film, the legendary Ousmane Sembene, exhorting Ibrahim and the audience to build Senegal. As a political project, the film has an infectious punk attitude, avoiding many traps: There are no postcolonial white villains or saviours, no prejudices for or against the superstitious Ibrahim’s religious faith, and although starvation is a realistic prospect and Ibrahim has seven children, there are no maudlin shots of starving babes pleading with their father. As a toxic patriarch, Ibrahim is not seen dealing with his children at all, and the audience is trusted to judge him on that.