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Where Ousmane Sembène’s first two films, 1966’s Black Girl and 1968’s Mandabi, each focus on myriad struggles faced by an individual during Senegal’s early post-colonial years, his follow-up, Emitai, takes a more expansive view of the effects of colonialism two decades earlier. Centering on the defiance of a Diola tribe during World War II, 1971’s Emitai sacrifices none of the immediacy and urgency of Black Girl and Mandabi. Indeed, the film is perhaps an even more damning and incisive take-down of French colonial rule.

Painting a concise and pointed portrait of oppression in broad, revolutionary strokes, Emitai exposes the modern form of slavery that was France’s conscription of Senegalese men to fight on the deadliest frontlines of European battlegrounds. The film simultaneously details the meticulous taxation methods the French employed during this period, which, in attempting to seize a majority of tribes’ rice supply to feed their troops,...

Documentary fans have a lot to be excited about this month on HBO and Max. April begins with the premiere of The Synanon Fix, a docuseries that follows the rise and fall of the cult-like drug rehabilitation program Synanon. The documentary Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion takes a deep-dive into the controversial “one size fits most” clothing brand Brandy Mellville and the impact of fast fashion on the planet.

An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th looks at the surge of political violence and anti-government sentiment that led to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, and the effects still felt nearly 30 years later. HBO is also returning with a second part to their popular docuseries The Jinx, with filmmakers continuing their investigation of Robert Durst.

But if documentaries aren’t your thing, there’s still plenty of popular films hitting Max in April, like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,...

It's a new month, and HBO and Max will be showering their subscribers with gifts all April long! This month, the Wbd properties will welcome the arrival of unscripted projects like the premiere of Conan O’Brien’s new travel comedy series “Conan O’Brien Must Go” and the fourth season of the Emmy Award-winning drag-centric “We're Here.” Plus, Park Chan-wook and A24’s “The Sympathizer” limited series and the highly anticipated continuation of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” will all be available to stream throughout the month.

Find out everything coming to Max this April, including The Streamable’s top picks to add to your watch list!

Sign Up $9.99+ / month Max.com What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Coming to Max in April 2024? “Alex Edelman: Just For Us” | Saturday, April 6

Filmed in front of a live audience at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre in August 2023, Alex Edelman brings his solo special,...

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki continues his investigation of convicted murderer Robert Durst in The Jinx – Part Two, a six-episode documentary series premiering on Max on April 21, 2024. The streaming service’s April lineup also includes the seven-episode limited series The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and starring Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr in multiple roles.

Comedian Alex Edelman hosts a brand new comedy special, and Conan O’Brien visits favorite fans from his podcast series in the four-episode unscripted series Conan O’Brien Must Go. The documentary series The Synanon Fix exploring the drug rehabilitation program joins Max’s lineup on April 1st. And the streaming service has set April premiere dates for the documentaries Brandy Hellville & The Cult Of Fast Fashion and An American Bombing: The Road To April 19th.

Series & Films Arriving On Max In April 2024

April 1

American Renegades (2018)

Basquiat (1996)

Black Swan (2010)

Body of Lies (2008)

Bridget Jones’s Diary...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSBreathless.The Mubi Podcast returns on January 25. Titled “Tailor Made,” the fifth season will consider landmark movies that captured major fashions of their times—from Jean Seberg in Breathless to Sofia Coppola’s body of work to date—with insights from leading costume designers, fashion designers, cinematographers, and directors.Alongside the announcement of the Competition and Encounters sections, with the addition of new films by Abderrahmane Sissako, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Ruth Beckermann, and more, we’ve updated our Berlinale lineup post ahead of the festival’s commencement on February 15.June Givanni, a writer on and curator of African and African diasporic cinema and the founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, is to be recognized by BAFTA with an Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema...

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more seminal year in movie-going history than 1977, which unspooled such game-changers and genre-benders as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “Airport ’77,” “Sorcerer,” and many, many more.

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of one of the wildest years in recent cinema history, The Film Society of Lincoln Center has programmed their ambitious ’77, a 33-film series surveying the sweeping cinematic landscape of a prolific year in cinema, in the United States and around the world.

Read MoreHow ‘Jaws’ Forever Changed the Modern Day Blockbuster — And What Today’s Examples Could Learn From It

While the debut of George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” is likely the most notable name in a long list of ’77 titles, the year also played home to “Jubilee,” “Eraserhead,” “Hausu,” “Wizard,” and “Smokey and the Bandit.” That startling breadth of film options speaks to the changing times — both...

Amitava Nag reviews “Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen- Bengali Cinema’s First Couple” by Maitreyee B Chowdhury, the first book in English on Bengali cinema’s evergreen couple

U ttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen are the two names that any one remotely connected to Bengali cinema can associate with even today, more than three decades after they ever acted on screen. Today’s media and the cultural space which is filled up with the modern day hero and the bit-sized starlets hanging from his shoulder in all directions cannot still quite shrug off the magnetic presence of this romantic on-screen couple who swayed Bengali cinema in its golden period – the 1950s and the 1960s. Strangely, there had not been any book on the duo in English (a few are available in Bengali though but not very authentic in any sense) so far till one comes across Maitreyee B Chowdhury...

A revealing new season of films at the Ica looks at the links between religion and revolt

Do the roots of the Arab spring lie in cinema? The question seems absurd: surely kleptocratic dictatorship, youth unemployment and grain prices all played a more important part. Iranian film scholar Hamid Dabashi disagrees: "If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start. Look at a film like Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy."

Dabashi will be speaking this month at Winds of Change, a series of talks and screenings at the Ica in London showcasing films from across the Muslim world; it hopes to explore the rich, sometimes fraught relationship between religion and civic society. Özer Kiziltan's...

Just a reminder, for those who may have missed this post earlier in the week… you’ve got a few more days to watch the film if you haven’t already.

Piggy-backing Kj’s movie club idea, I thought it’d be worthwhile to start what we could call a “Filmmakers series;” essentially, we pick a filmmaker of African descent, watch all their films in succession, and discuss on this blog.

It’ll be a weekly thing – meaning, at the start of each new week (Monday), a film from the selected filmmaker’s oeuvre will be assigned, and we all would then have a week to watch it; the following week, I’ll share my thoughts on the film, and we’ll discuss it collectively. Hopefully, many of you participate. It’s kind of useless if it’s just me yacking on in a post. It’s supposed to be...

By Michael Atkinson

The seminal will behind everything that matters about sub-Saharan African cinema, and at the same time the world's most guileless filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene was virtually a one-man continental film culture for 40 years, establishing the cinematic syntax and priorities for an entire section of mankind, and its relationship with movies. From the first mini-feature, "Borom Sarret" (1964) to the last, vibrant, polemical film "Moolaadé" (2004), Sembene's work aches with sociopolitical austerity . as an artist, he's virtually style-free, almost unprofessional, but possessed of a voice as clear and uncomplicated as sunlight. Primal, unsophisticated experiences, the films are simple but never simplistic, lowbrow but unsensational, fastidiously realistic and yet unconcerned with sustaining illusion. His filmography is more or less divided between cool, undramatic autopsies on post-colonial norms and folly (1966's "Black Girl," 1968's "Mandabi," 1974's "Xala") and demi-epics of colonial horror (1971's Emitai, 1977's "Ceddo," 1987's "Camp de Thiaroye"). The slow burn,...