Alternately wise and very funny in its treatment of tribalism and in its grasp of neocolonial corruption, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene’s seventh feature (1992, 115 min.) has so much to say about contemporary Africa that you emerge from it with a sense of understanding an entire society from top to bottom. A political activist and Catholic figurehead known as Guelwaar (which means the noble one) dies from a beating after delivering an impassioned speech against foreign aid and its attendant corruptions, and when friends and family gather for his funeral they’re shocked to discover that his body is missing. It emerges that he was accidentally buried in a Muslim cemetery, and the tribal, political, and cultural disputes that arise from this constitute the remainder of this beautifully told story. (A lot of significance is attached to when the characters speak French and when they speak Wolof, the principal language of Senegal.) In French and Wolof with subtitles. 115 min. (JR)