In 1987, at the Cannes Film Festival, the first African film ever screened in the official competition won the Jury Prize. Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé was called to the stage, asending in a sky-blue boubou embroidered with multicolored silk thread among a sea of bow ties. As he accepted the award, he dedicated this historic prize to “those who helped him on the other side, who have no right to speak” — a powerful tribute to the South African technicians silenced and oppressed under the apartheid regime. At that moment, the future and recognition of African cinema seemed to open wide, as if a long-awaited light had finally been turned on.

Yeelen, “the light” in his native Bambara, is the title of this initiatory fable in the colors of the desert, shrouded in myths and magic, where a young warrior must overcome the trials set by the father who tries to destroy him. A story of confrontation between generations, one of his famous works: as already in Finyé (The Wind, 1982), about the repression of university students in revolt against the tradition of their fathers, in search of a new world to bring to life. The work prophesies the crushing of pro-democracy protests in Bamako on March 22, 1991, a prelude to the overthrow of dictator Moussa Traoré a few days later, as noted by the French left-wing newspaper Libération.

Author of nine feature films that stand as landmarks in the history of African cinema, Cissé was a pioneering figure who paved the way for countless others— the doyen praised by Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee alike. He died on February 19 at the age of 84 in Bamako, just days before he was set to preside over the jury of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou.

Souleymane Cissé was born on April 21, 1940, in Bamako, Mali’s capital. It was in Dakar that Cissé did his secondary schooling, before returning to Mali to witness the outbreak of independence in 1960. At the time, cinema halls in Bamako showed a mix of Bollywood, Hollywood, and Egyptian films. The young Cissé went there as often as possible — sometimes watching two films a night — and often organized screenings and debates at the Youth House in Bamako. His passion for film was inseparable from a political awakening, sparked by his discovery of a documentary on the arrest of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. This early influence motivated him to pursue formal cinema training, earning a scholarship to study under Mark Donskoi at the Russian State University of Cinematography in Moscow. There, he would meet other African filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène and Sarah Maldoror, who would go on to shape the continent’s film industry. In the utopia of brotherhood in the East, he was the Black man in a chapka, initiated into the masters of Soviet cinema. Art served the revolution, and formerly colonized peoples were encouraged to address the blind spot in representations of Africa. This promise was one that Souleymane Cissé aimed to fulfill as soon as he returned to his country, where a military coup had already brought an end to the young republic of Modibo Keïta in 1968. After three years of monotony, his role as a cameraman at the Ministry of Information finally offered him a welcome escape, allowing him to travel the country as a state documentary filmmaker. In a characteristic understatement, he admitted to having ‘a lot of problems’ with his first feature-length film, Den Muso (The Young Girl, 1975) — problems serious enough to land him in prison due to his acceptance of French funding. The movie, in Bambara, is about a mute girl who becomes pregnant after being raped and is subsequently shunned by her family. A scandal erupted in Mali when the authorities confiscated the film reel. By 1978, having established his own production company, he directed Baara (Labour), a film reflecting on the integration of the working class into the country’s economic upheaval. However, it was the selection of Finyè (1982) for the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes that marked a turning point in the recognition of the Malian filmmaker. This recognition culminated in the consecration of fourth feature Yeelen at Cannes, a film whose poetic imagery, steeped in ancestral spirituality, undoubtedly resonated with the romanticism of a new Western audience. The story follows a young man with magical powers who travels to his uncle to confront his sorcerer father. It “recreates the pre-modern world of the Bambara culture, where the only hint of the industrial age is the presence of a blacksmith,” The New York Times wrote in 1987.

Cissé’s latest work, the 2015 film O Ka (“Our House”), his fifth to debut at Cannes, depicts the 2008 eviction of his four sisters from their childhood home by police.

In 2023, Cannes honored Cissé, with the Carrosse d’Or — the Golden Coach Award — presented by the Society of French Directors. Cissé became the second African filmmaker to win that prize after Ousmane Sembène, a Senegalese director, who won the prize at the 2005 festival. “I thank my colleagues for choosing me. This award motivates me to create new films, reinvent myself, and evolve my vision,” he said in an interview with AFP. He was also the subject of a documentary directed by his daughter Fatou Cissé, titled “Hommage d’une fille à son père.”

Cissé was often outspoken about other barriers to the spread of African cinema – criticising “censorship” and “contempt”, and urging young film-makers not to act like “beggars who must plead every time for financing from Europe” but instead seek greater independence.