Ousmane Sembene names his movie for a single mother of two educated children, who manages a Dakar, Senegal, gas station with unbeatable aplomb, wielding a bicycle horn like a combination intercom and sceptre.
NEWYORKER: Faat Kin??
2.
Yet beware of smugness: Sembene is a dialectician.
NEWYORKER: Moolaad??
3.
Despite his evident affection for even the most benighted of the villagers, Sembene, eighty-two years old and the first internationally acclaimed African filmmaker, seems to flatter the Western notions of progress that are making inroads.