Souleymane Cisse, father of African cinema, dead at 84

Malian director Souleymane Cisse, one of the fathers of African cinema, died on Wednesday in a Bamako clinic aged 84, his daughter told AFP.

“Papa died today in Bamako. We are all in shock. He dedicated all his life to his country, to cinema and to art”, Mariam Cisse said.

Cisse won the jury’s prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for “Yeelen” (“Brightness”), which draws on legends from west Africa’s Bambara people and was the first African film to win an award at Cannes.

In 2023 Cannes honoured him again with the Carrosse d’Or, an award given to directors who have “marked the history of cinema with their boldness, their exacting standards and their intransigence in staging”.

He is one of two only filmmakers to have twice won the grand prize at Burkina Faso’s Panafrican Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), among the largest and most prestigious in Africa.

He was due to travel to Burkina Faso capital’s Ouagadougou to head the 29th edition of the festival’s features jury from February 22.

In an interview with AFP in 2011, Cisse urged the new generation of African filmmakers to seek independence from European funding.

“Today young people have a miserabilist approach to film, of beggars who must plead every time for financing from Europe,” he said.