Ousmane Sembne uses film as a response to socio-political inequities found within neocolonial Senegal. His articulations in the film Ceddo are grounded in the complex use of class terminology which is re-appropriated and renegotiated in order to critique the socio-political systems within modern Senegal. The complexity surrounding ceddo reflects not just social fluidity, but a contested interpretation of social status involving historic meanings and the contemporary implications of how these historic interpretations have been renegotiated. This project discusses the complexities in the renegotiation of the social term ceddo through an examination of Ousmane Sembnes 1977 film Ceddo and the subsequent political debate between Sembne and Lopold Sdar Senghor, then president of Senegal. The film will be used to reveal the linguistic complexities ceddo lends to Sembnes resistance to Senghors administration through mediated discourse. The film, then, will be linked to resistance as found within African oral literature.