African filmmakers have been on a quest to tell new stories that reflect true life on the continent. At the same time, they are calling for the repatriation of colonial-era film archives in an effort to recapture their history and re-depict it from an African perspective. A report commissioned by Paris in 2018 from Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy points out that more than 90% of the material cultural legacy of sub-Saharan Africa remains preserved and housed outside of the African continent. There are countless initiatives to digitize, and in many cases restore rights, but there is still a long way to go. Baron Thierno Souleymane Diallo shows these difficulties in accessing this legacy in his film Au cimetière de la pellicule [In the film cemetery], where he embarks on the search for Mouramani, which is supposed to be the first ever made by a French-speaking Black filmmaker.
