The SRF, the Society of Film Directors, has awarded the prestigious Carrosse d’Or, which traditionally rewards a filmmaker for his or her entire career, to a great name in African cinema, the Malian Souleymane Cissé. At 82, he thus becomes the second filmmaker of the continent distinguished since the Senegalese Sembène Ousmane, in 2005.
It is a legend of African cinema that the Cannes festival will celebrate this year
In fifty years of career, Souleymane Cissé is the author of an incandescent work, placed under the auspices of poetry and political revolt. His first films, shot in a dictatorial political climate, experienced the horrors of censorship, and the SRF rightly celebrates the political courage it took the filmmaker to bring them to fruition. All are now classics, starting with Yeelenthe story of the confrontation between a father and his son, who won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. Twelve years later, baara, chronicle of sound and fury around a student revolt, obtains the Stallion of Yennenga, the highest award of Fespaco, the pan-African film festival.
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Passing from fiction to great spectacle, as Waati to minimalist documentary, Souleymane Cissé has always stayed the course, avoiding ideology to create art, and express values that cross space and time. Last year, a documentary about him, directed by his daughter, Fatou Cissé, was screened out of competition. Souleymane Cissé will receive the Carrosse d’Or on May 17 in Cannes, during the opening ceremony of the Quinzaine des Cinéastes.
► Read also : Souleymane Cissé, the dean of African cinema at Cannes (in 2015)