The plot depicts El Hadji, a rich businessman in Senegal, who is cursed with crippling erectile dysfunction upon the day of his marriage to his third wife; that could only be cured by him stripping naked before the lowly of the society and have them spit on him.

At the beginning, he suspects that one or both of his first two wives have put the spell on him, without realizing that he walks by the true guilty party every day (beggars and people he has stolen from).

Xala received its Blu-Ray debut through a Criterion Collection release in May 2024, as part of a box set containing two other films by Sembène, Emitaï and Ceddo.

[5] Aaron Mushengyezi wrote: "I posit that in Xala, he evokes two problematic binary oppositions: between the corruption and decadence of foreign influence and the purity and morality of African tradition, the former represented as 'corrupting' and the latter 'redemptive'; and between strong, revolutionary 'masculine' women and villainous, weak, 'feminine' men.

"[6] Another scholarly perspective is from Harriet D. Lyons: "I shall argue that in Sembene's work the "covertness" of the folk material takes the form of suppression of detail combined with the retention of essential values.