Malian director Souleymane CISSÉ passed away on February 19, 2025 at the age of 84.
The Festival des 3 Continents would like to pay tribute to this immense filmmaker, winner of the Montgolfière d’Or grand prize in Nantes at the very first edition of the festival in 1979.
“If my generation’s first encounter with Souleymane Cissé’s cinema was the discovery of the timeless, imperishable light of “La lumière” (1987), the Festival des 3 Continents audience’s first encounter with the Malian filmmaker was early, and even immediate, as he won the Montgolfière d’Or for “Le travail” (1978) at the very first edition of the festival in 1979.
At the age of 39, Cissé had already made more than half his films: short and medium-length films, plus his first feature, “La jeune fille” (The Young Girl) in 1975. He then went on to make a remarkable third feature, “Le vent” (1980), blowing the hopes of his country’s student youth caught in the shackles of military repression and tradition. If “La lumière” still shines so brightly in our memories, it’s because it has undoubtedly remained one of the most vigorous bursts of West African cinema. We felt that he was the masterpiece of a generation that, from Gaston Kaboré, Cheick Oumar Sissoko and Désiré Ecaré to Idrissa Ouedraogo, had just unleashed the most creative impulses of sub-Saharan African cinema on the world’s screens.
This blinding brilliance was perhaps a visionary modern warning that a fire was already threatening to neutralize the efforts of this generation in the 1990s – a fire caused by material and financial difficulties, censorship or political disinterest, the disappearance of cinemas, lack of training and consequent dependence on the former colonial power… Souleymane Cissé will remain the emblematic milestone of this generation.” – Jérôme Baron, artistic director
