It was well-received by French audiences and critics,[1] and has since received considerable academic attention due to the film's unconventional framing and its implicit rebuke to chauvinist, one-dimensional European portrayals of life in Africa.
Along the way, they encounter a wide variety of peoples and places, and have a series of whimsical interactions with them, alternately scavenging food and begging from local villagers.
Damouré also attends a rally by the Nkrumaist Convention People's Party, and becomes notorious for being a jaguar, a slang term that is described as referring to a well-dressed, polite, and sharp young man.
While the film purports to show them walking across West Africa for months, in reality they traveled most of the distance in Rouch's Land Rover.
Rouch's sensitivity to other cultures in his cinematic approach predates the popularity of academic critiques of Orientalism by several decades, and can be seen as a rebuke of European chauvinism and racism,[1] as well as a demonstration of the means by which indigenous people can reclaim their narratives.
[1] Rouch commented that Jaguar did a better job documenting the phenomena of seasonal migration in Niger than his actual scientific monographs on the subject.