A powerfully incisive classic based on historical fact, The Camp at Thiaroye won a top prize at the Venice Film Festival. African troops returning to their native Senegal from Europe at the close of World War II are placed by French authorities in transit camps, where they are faced with racist attitudes as deep as those many of them have just experienced while imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. While the soldiers are ostensibly being held only temporarily before discharge, it soon becomes clear that the rulers are using the camps to reestablish the supremacy they held over African citizens prior to the war. Tension escalates to rebellion. “This, in microcosm, is a story of colonialism, told from the receiving end and taken to a radical conclusion. Sembène and Sow have made what is not only a humane, passionate film, but an honest and vital memorial to those men who died . . . at Camp Thiaroye” (Tom Charity, Time Out).