At night, they drink away their sorrows in bars while dreaming about their idealised lives as their "movie" alter-egos, alternatively as an FBI Agent, a womanizing bachelor, a successful boxer, and even able to stand up to the white colonialists that seduce away their women.

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.

The filming process for Moi, un noir was rather idiosyncratic: Jean Rouch spent nine months[2] amongst his ethnographic subjects and allowed them to tell their own story in a very personal way, inherently challenging the rules of the field.

[3] In making the movie, Jean Rouch was surprised as to how much his subjects were willing to disclose about their life’s dreams and aspirations, finding that his nimble camera offered him a passport into freedom, allowing him to navigate circles he hadn’t dreamt of integrating.

[5] This film was released in the midst of the Nigerien decolonization movement, and carries with it an arguably strong indictment of the pervasive nature of the icons of Western culture on the African psyche.

For instance, in the scene where Edward G. Robinson brags about his conquests with white women in Europe to Élite, the film cuts to shots of the sterns of ships registered in the ports that he name-checks (such as Oslo), corresponding to the shipments of sacks that they have just loaded in their menial jobs, suggesting that the character is being untruthful.