Souleymane Cissé

Souleymane Cissé
Souleymane Cissé in 2009
Born	(1940-04-21) April 21, 1940 (age 76) Bamako, Mali
Occupation	film director and screenwriter

Souleymane Cissé (born April 21, 1940) is a Malian film director.

Born in Bamako and raised in a Muslim family, Souleymane Cissé was a passionate cinephile from childhood. He attended secondary school in Dakar, and returned to Mali in 1960 after national independence.

His film career began as an assistant projectionist for a documentary on the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. This triggered his desire to create films of his own, and he obtained a scholarship to the Moscow school of Cinema and Television.

In 1970 he returned to Mali once more, and joined the Ministry of Information as a cameraman, where he produced documentaries and short films.

In 1972, he produced his first medium-length film, Cinq jours d’une vie (Five Days in a Life), which tells the story of a young man who drops out of a Qur'anic school and becomes a petty thief living on the street. Cinq Jours premiered at the Carthage Film Festival.

In 1974, he produced his first full-length film in the Bambara language, Den muso (The Girl), the story of a young mute girl who has been raped. The girl becomes pregnant, and is rejected both by her family and by the child's father. Den Muso was banned by the Malian Minister of Culture, and Cissé was arrested and jailed for having accepted French funding.

In 1978, Cissé produced Baara (Work), which received the Yenenga's Talon prize at Fespaco in 1979.

In 1982, he produced Finyé (Wind), which tells the story of dissatisfied Malian youth rising up against the establishment. This earned him his second Yenenga's Talon, at 1983's Fespaco.

Between 1984 and 1987, he produced Yeelen (Light), a coming-of-age film which won the Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.