1940 – 2025.
An award-winning writer and director who became the first Black African filmmaker to win the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, transitioned in Bamako, Mali. He was 84. Mr. Cissé was catapulted to worldwide fame with the release in 1987 of “Yeelen” (“Light” in his native Bambara).
The film won the jury prize at Cannes and was nominated as the best foreign film in the 1989 Spirit Awards. The director Martin Scorsese called the film “one of the great revelatory experiences of my moviegoing life.”