Moolaade

2004 work from Ousmane Sembene
The storytelling here is simple, perhaps deceptively so. Much of a time we have a long plan sequence with a wide screen, and a long shot, with many characters set out in an almost theatrical array. It is coming across as very simple, but even here we have some movement in the staging, and the location comes to life. Small bric a brac at the shop, the looks of the mosque and other things, slowly come to alert us to a wider life. Sembene usually works (here) with his longer shots, but also has quite neutral close-ups some of the time.
The formal interest with this film is the build up. We have a wide picture at first, sometimes even quite cheery, with an atmosphere almost light, except for some hushed mentions of some kind of ceremony. The film then zeroes in, piece by piece cutting out anything extraneous, almost like a metronome speeding up and speeding up. I can't speak of shot-length, but that is certain the impression given by the concentration of the narrative. Each thing we saw before is slowly revealed in a new way; their is pain, ome system of domination, in what looked before relatively harmless.
This kind of unfolding horror becomes truly terrible; this film is clearly a political film, with a clear message, and it, for this, does certain affirmative things that could appear a little strange if one did not appreciate this. As a piece of propoganda, it is effective, beautifully made, powerful, and above all, important.