This dissertation examines critical, essayistic filmmaking practices developedby postcolonial migrants in Paris during the turbulent years following 1968. It focuses on several films which both emerged from and attempted to further migrant struggles over place-making in postcolonial Paris. Analyzing works by Med Hondo, Sidney Sokhona, Djouhra Abouda and Alain Bonnamy, I demonstrate that their hybrid, experimental works push spectators to critically reframe the socio-spatial dynamics of racial capitalism from the perspective of North and sub-Saharan African migrants, developing sophisticated aesthetico-political responses to postcolonial questions of migration, urban development and labor markets, diasporic identity, subjectivity and ideology, mobility regimes, and political resistance. I call these militant audiovisual interventions “decolonial essay films.ˮ The project calls for an interdisciplinary approach, engaging with recentstudies from (primarily Francophone) postcolonial studies; theories of racial capitalism; Marxist and Black geography; urban and mobility studies; and essayistic and diasporic/postcolonial film studies. Contextualizing these works within a wide range of political filmmaking practices, from the militant experimentations of Third Cinema to the rhythmic montages of Soviet city-films, I provide historically-situated close readings of Med Hondoʼs Soleil Ô (1970), Sidney Sokhonaʼs Nationalité: Immigré (1976), and Djouhra Abouda and Alain Bonnamyʼs Ali au Pays des Merveilles (1976). These works merit revisiting, as their sharp and generative visions remap the dynamics that still characterize our cities.