Portal:African cinema/Selected biography

Selected biographies list edit

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Ladj Ly (French: [ladʒ li]; born 19 March 1980 in Paris) is a French film director and screenwriter. He won a Jury Prize in Cannes Film Festival for Les Misérables in 2019. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Ly's parents are from Mali and he grew up in Montfermeil, a district of Bosquets. He started making films with his friends Kim Chapiron, Romain Gavras, and JR, in the collective Kourtrajmé.

He directed his first films, notably for Oxmo Puccino, and his first documentaries, 365 days in Clichy-Montfermeil, filmed after the 2005 French riots; Go Fast Connexion; and 365 jours au Mali (365 days in Mali).

Les Misérables is the first non-documentary film he directed. The film received many awards, notably at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and a nomination for the César Award for Best Short Film in 2018. In the same year, he was nominated for the César Award for Best Documentary Film for À voix haute : La Force de la parole with Stéphane de Freitas

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Funke Akindele (b. August 24, 1977) is a Nigerian filmmaker, actress, director and producer who holds the distinction of helming the top three highest-grossing Nigerian films: Omo Ghetto:The Saga (2020), Battle on Buka Street (2022) and A Tribe Called Judah (2023), the only Nigerian film to have crossed the billion naira mark.

Akindele made her acting debut in the TV series, I Need to Know (1998-2002) and shot to fame with her role in the comedy-drama film Jenifa (2008) which earned her her first Africa Movie Academy Award (AMVCA) for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The film’s popularity spawned a sequel (2011) as well as a spin-off TV series (2014) Jenifa’s Diary.

In 2019 she made her feature film directorial debut with the political satire, Your Excellency. Sixteen years after her first AMVCA win, Akindele remains the most nominated actress/filmmaker at the AMVCA, and with six awards, is the actress with the most wins.

In 2022 Akindele announced she was suspending her film career to be the running mate to Olajide Adediran, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the governorship of Lagos. The Adediran-Akindele ticket lost in the May 2023 elections to the incumbent. Seven months later, Akindele made Nollywood history with A Tribe Called Judah.

Rosine Mbakam (b. January 10, 1980) is an acclaimed Cameroonian filmmaker who has gained recognition for her work which explores themes of family dynamics, cultural identity and migration.

In 2016, Rosine Mbakam directed her first feature film, a creative documentary titled The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, (Les deux visages d'une femme Bamiléké) . The 76-minute film is a personal documentary in which the director focuses on her return to her native country with her French husband and their son, seven years after she left. The film is built by a series of conversations mainly between Mbakam and her mother on varied subjects connected to family, gender, and also politics. The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) are among the sixty-plus film festivals at which the movie was screened.

In her subsequent work, Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) she continued to document the immigrant experience, focusing on the lives of African immigrants in Europe. In her 2021 documentary called Les prières de Delphine (Delphine’s Prayers), she portrays Delphine, a young Cameroonian woman who has been caught in sex work in Cameroon. This earned her the Cinéma du réel Young Jury Award in 2021. In 2023, Mbakam released her first narrative feature, Mambar Pierrette, centered on a talented seamstress and single mother in Douala which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007), often referred to as the Father of African Cinema, was a Senegalese filmmaker and writer regarded as a trailblazer in the African literary and filmmaking space. Sembene was born in Ziguinchor, Senegal and largely drew inspiration from Serer religious festivals and his experiences in the French Army during the Second World War. Self-taught to read and write in French, his writing career began with novels including Le Docker Noir (The Black Docker,1956) and O Pays, mon beu pepule! (Oh country, my beautiful people! 1957). These novels addressed the themes of racial oppression and colonialism.

He transitioned into filmmaking in the 1960s and produced classic films including La Noir de (1966) and Xala (1975) which addressed societal inequalities and post-colonial corruption. Black Girl is widely considered the first Sub-Saharan African film by an African filmmaker to receive international attention. His final film, Moolaade (2004), explored the controversial subject of female genital mutilation.

His legacy encompasses a rich body of literary works and influential films making him a seminal figure in African cultural expression. In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world.