Raised in a Muslim family, Souleymane Cissé was a passionate cinephile from childhood. He attended secondary school in Dakar, and returned to Mali in 1960 after national independence. His film career began as an assistant projectionist for a documentary on the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. This triggered his desire to create films of his own, and 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 produced documentaries and short films. In 1972, he produced his first medium-length film, Cinq jours d’une vie (Five Days in a Life), which tells the story of a young man who drops out of a Qur’anic school and becomes a petty thief living on the street. Cinq Jours premiered at the Carthage Film Festival. In 1974, he produced his first full-length film in the Bambara language, Den muso (The Girl), the story of a young mute girl who has been raped. The girl becomes pregnant… read more
