Malian director Souleymane Cissé, one of the fathers of African cinema, died Wednesday, February 19, in a Bamako clinic aged 84, his daughter told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Tributes poured in for Cissé, whose trailblazing work on the silver screen across more than half a century was marked by a commitment to African storytelling, deep humanism and profound political engagement.
“Papa died today in Bamako. We are all in shock. He dedicated all his life to his country, to cinema and to art,” Mariam Cissé said.
Cissé won the jury’s prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for Yeelen, which draws on legends from West Africa’s Bambara people.
In 2023, Cannes honored 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.”
“This award encourages me to make new films, to reinvent myself and change my vision,” the director told AFP in an interview during his visit to the festival on the French Riviera. That award was stolen from his home in 2024, before being found again.
Fellow Malian director Boubacar Sidibe said in a message on Facebook that the Sahel country’s film industry was in “mourning” , while Culture Minister Mamou Daffé lamented the loss “of this monument of African cinema.”
‘If God wills it’
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 board a plane on Thursday to Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, to head the 29th edition of the festival’s features jury from February 22.
In an interview with AFP in 2011, Cissé 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.
Cissé championed the cinema of his home country and continent till the end of his life. In his 2023 Cannes interview with AFP he criticied the “censorship” and “contempt” that he said prevented African films being distributed around the world.
Even on the day of his death, he urged the military leaders in Mali – which declared 2025 a year of culture – to help the country’s industry catch up with its continental rivals.
“It is not enough to make cinema, the works must also be visible. May the authorities help us with the construction of cinemas,” he told a press conference on Wednesday morning. “This is the appeal I make to them before my death, if God wills it.”
(Le Monde with AFP)
