Director
Mali
Born on April 21, 1940, Souleymane Cissé is a Malian film director. Cissé is president of the Union of Creators and Entrepreneurs of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts of Western Africa (UCECAO). He attended secondary school in Dakar, and returned to Mali in 1960 after national independence, and then 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 directed documentaries and short films. In 1974, he directed his first full-length film, The Girl, which was banned by the Malian Minister of Culture. Due to this Cissé was arrested and jailed for having accepted French funding. Between 1984 and 1987, he directed Light, a coming-of-age film which won the Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. In 1995, he directed Time which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
