Moi un Noir (1958)

I, a Negro depicts young Nigerien immigrants who left their country to find work in the Ivory Coast, in the Treichville quarter of Abidjan, the capital. These immigrants live in squalor in Treichville, envious of the bordering quarters of The Plateau (the business and industrial district) and the old African quarter of Adjame. The film traces a week in these immigrants lives, blurring the line between their characters routines and their own. These dreamlike sequences are shot in a poetic mode. Each day is introduced by an interstitial voice of god omniscient narration from Jean Rouch, providing a universal thematic distance to the movie s events. The film is bookended by a narration directed at both Petit Jules and the audience from Edward G. Robinson fondly looking back on his childhood in Niger and concluding that his life is worthy of his dreams.