Portal:African cinema/Selected biography

Selected biographies list

Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/1

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.

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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.

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Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/7

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.

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Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/9

Thuso Mbedu (b. 8 July, 1991) is a South African actress. She starred in the big screen hit The Woman King, a historical epic film inspired by true events that took palace in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Her breakout role was in the 2016 South African teen drama series Is’Thunzi for which she won the 2018 South African Film and Television Award (SAFTA) for Best Actress in a Television Drama as well as consecutive nominations in 2017 and 2018 for an International Emmy.

In 2021, Mbedu made her international debut in the Amazon Video limited series The Underground Railroad making her the first South African actress to lead an American television series. The series, based on the novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead and directed by Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins, earned her a Hollywood Critics Association Award, an Independent Spirit Award, a Gotham Award and her second SAFTA nomination. Mbedu is set to feature in the upcoming musical drama film, Mufasa: The Lion King.

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Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/11

John Kani (b. 30 August, 1942) is a South African actor, playwright, and director. Kani gained international fame for his collaborations with South African playwright and novelist Athol Fugard, particularly in the anti-apartheid plays, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973) for which he won a Tony Award. His filmography spans numerous film roles, including T'Chaka in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Black Panther (2018). He voiced Rafiki in The Lion King (the live action remake of the Disney animated film and is set to reprise his role as Rafiki in Mufasa: The Lion King (2024).

Kani received a South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA) Life Time award in 2010 and in 2023, he was awarded an Honorary OBE from the British Government for his services to drama.

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Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/13

Loukman Ali (1 June 1990) is a Ugandan cinematographer, screenwriter, film director, and producer.  His directorial debut was Monday (2013), followed by The Bad Mexican (2017), a short comedy. In 2020 he made his feature debut with the mystery thriller The Girl in the Yellow Jumper which he wrote and directed and winner of Best Movie East Africa at the 2022 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards. In 2022 Ali directed the Netflix Nollywood feature film Brotherhood, winner of the 2023 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Nigerian Film. He wrote and directed three short films between 2021 and 2023: The Blind Date, Sixteen Rounds, and Ubuntu Uppercut, winner of Best African Short film at the Durban International Film Festival 2022. Most recently he directed the opening episode of Netflix’s African Folktales, Reimagined—Katera of the Punishment Island—based on the past cultural practice in Uganda of abandoning unmarried pregnant girls on The Punishment Island, also known as Akampene Island.  Ali is currently in pre-production with his latest film Pakachini. His shorts The Bad Mexican, Sixteen Rounds, and Ubuntu Uppercut can be viewed on his YouTube Channel.

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Portal:African cinema/Selected_biography/15 Jadesola Osiberu is a Nigerian writer, director producer, and founder of Greoh Studios. In 2024 she was named one of the “40 Most Powerful Women in International Film” by The Hollywood Reporter along with fellow Nollywood heavyweights Mo Abudu and Funke Akindele.  In 2017, Osiberu wrote and directed her first feature, Isoken, a romantic comedy-drama that won her best director at the 2018 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards and an Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Director nomination. Her next film Nigerian Trade was followed by Sugar Rush (2019), then Nollywood’s 4th highest-grossing film; Ayinla (2021) based on the life of the popular Apala musician Ayinla Omowura; and Brotherhood (2022).  In September 2022, Osiberu's Greoh Studios signed a three-year deal with Amazon Prime Video to develop and produce original scripted TV series and feature films. The first film from that deal, Gangs of Lagos (2023), was Amazon Prime's first film from Africa. Her upcoming film, Everything Scatter is a crime thriller that follows five young people during a day of protests in Lagos.

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Fatoumata Coulibaly in 2017

Fatoumata Coulibaly is a Malian film actress, director, journalist, and women's rights activist, particularly against female genital mutilation (FGM). Her first film appearance was in Guimba the Tyrant a Malian comedy drama film by noted Malian director Cheick Oumar Sissoko and winner of the Grand prize at the 1995 Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). She is most known for her lead role in Moolaadé (2004) by Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembène. Coulibaly plays the role of Collé, a Burkinabe woman who uses moolaadé ("magical protection") to protect girls from female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice of which Coulabily was herself a victim. She won the Best Actress award at the Cinemanila International Film Festival in 2005 and the film went on to play an important role in raising wider awareness of FGM.

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Ramsey Nouah in Gbomo Gbomo Express

Ramsey Nouah (b. 19 December 1970) is a Nigerian actor and director.  His acting career took off in the early 90s when he won a leading role in the Nigerian TV soap opera Fortunes (1993-94) in his first-ever audition. His first major movie role followed in 1996 with Silent Night and continued with a string of starring roles in popular films alongside Nollywood leading actresses Genevieve Nnaji, Stella Damasus, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde and Stephanie Okereke Linus, among others, to become one of Nollywood's most in-demand actors.

In 2010 Nouah won the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in The Figurine (2009), a supernatural thriller by Kunle Afolayan and the year’s biggest box office draw in Nigeria.  

Nouah made his directorial debut with Living in Bondage: Breaking Free in 2019, a sequel to the Nollywood classic Living in Bondage (1992), and which ranks 21st on the list of highest-grossing Nigerian films of all time. The film garnered over a dozen nominations and multiple wins, including seven awards at the 2020 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards, including Best Overall Movie and Best Best Director.

In 2020 he went on to direct Rattle Snake: The Ahanna Story, a remake of the Nollywood classic action film Rattlesnake (1995). The film holds the 43rd spot on the list of highest-grossing Nigerian films of all time. A box office success, Rattlensnake also secured over three dozen award nominations and multiple wins including another AMVCA Best Director award for Nouah in 2022.

Tòkunbò, an Action drama film starring Gideon Okeke in the title role, is Nouah’s third directorial feature. It was released on Netflix on August 23rd, reaching a 10 Top ranking in Nigeria within its first week.

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Blitz Bazawule in 2023

Samuel Bazawule (b, 19 April 1982), known professionally as Blitz Bazawule and Blitz the Ambassador, is a Ghanaian filmmaker, author, visual artist, rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. Blitz made his directorial debut with The Burial of Kojo (2018), which won Best First Feature Film by a director at the 15th Africa Movie Academy Awards and the Grand Nile Prize at the Luxor African Film Festival.  He directed the musical film adaptation The Color Purple in 2023 and is currently developing a six-episode miniseries based on his novel The Scent of Burnt Flowers about an African American fugitive couple seeking refuge in Ghana. He is also developing another film based on the historic figure of Yasuke, Japan’s first Black samurai who lived in 16th century Japan.

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Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, (born in 1961 in Abéché, Chad) is a Chadian film director. Though living in France since the 80s, he remains his country's best known and most awarded filmmaker, recognized for his films set and filmed in Chad. Earlier in his career his films tended to focus on the impact of the country’s multiple civil wars, but since the end of the last one in 2010, Haroun has increasingly turned his attention to other social concerns.

After directing several shorts in the 90s, Haroun released his first feature film Bye Bye Africa (1999), which he wrote, directed, and starred in, and is Chad's first feature film.  Other notable films followed, including:

Abouna (2002), follows two brothers on a quest to find their missing father, and was awarded the Best Cinematography award at FESPACO. Dry Season (2006) tells the story of a son who sets out to avenge his father’s murder during the civil war, and won the Yennenga Bronze Standard prize, as well as the Best Cinematography award at FESPACO. His fourth feature film A Screaming Man (2010), also framed around Chad’s conflict, won the Jury Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

With GriGris (2013), Haroun trains his lens on a young dancer pulled into the world of smuggling. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Haroun's most recent film Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021) a female-centered drama, deals with the fallout facing a mother and daughter when the 15-year old becomes pregnant in a country where abortion is both illegal and considered immoral.

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Apolline Traoré in 2017

Apolline Traoré (born in May 1976) is a Burkinabe film director.  Her film career started in the 2000s in the United States, where she attended college, directing several short films including Kounandi (2003), which was selected for the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival.

Her first feature film, Sous la clarté de la lune (2004), was co-written with and produced by Idrissa Ouédraogo, one of the Burkina Faso's best-known directors. In the late 2010s, she gained wider acclaim with Moi Zaphira (2013) and Frontières (2018), which follows four women from different regions who develop friendships during a bus journey across West Africa, The film was awarded two prizes at 2017 Fespaco, Africa’s largest film festival.

Her 4th feature Desrances (2019), set during the 2010-11 Ivorian crisis following the 2010 Ivory Coast elections, received many African and international awards including Fespaco’s award for Best Set Design.

Her most recent film Sira (2023), about a young Fulani woman who fights against Islamist terrorists after a deadly attack on her caravan in the Sahel, is Traoré's most lauded film to date.  It had its world premiere at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Feature Film and was selected as the Burkinabé entry in the Best International Feature Film category for the 96th Academy Awards—the first time Burkina Faso submitted a film since 1989.

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Kyle Shepherd in 2010

Kyle Shepherd (born 8 July 1987 in Cape Town) is a South African jazz film and theater composer and pianist. He was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Jazz in 2014 and the UNISA (University of South Africa) piano competition winner in the Jazz category in 2015.

His television credits include the Netflix South African hit drama series, Unseen, Blood and Water, and Savage Beauty. 

His film credits include the South African films Noem My Skollie (Call Me Thief), South Africa's official entry to the 2017 Academy Awards; Fiela se Kind (2019) winner of Best Score at the 2020 Silwerskerm Film Festival—one of world's only Afrikaans film festivals; Barakat (2020), South Africa's official entry to the 2022 Academy Awards and giving Shepherd his second Silwerskerm award for Best Score (2022); Vlugtig (2021) and Indemnity (2021). His most recent film score was for the comedy caper The Umbrella Men (2022), awarded Best Film at London's Film Africa Fest.

Shepherd is also the co-creator of the hit Afrikaans musical television show, Koortjies with Cape Town jazz and gospel music star Jonathan Rubain.

Of his process of composing for film:

"I try to learn the heart of the story. Sometimes, I don't need the full details. I don't always read the script. And then I just write music without any information. I write in open form. Usually, I come up with five or 10 pieces. And somewhere in between that, we find the main theme. Once you have your theme, you can really blast out from there. It's also nice to write music that's not restricted by the scene or edit."

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