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Today would have been the 80th birthday of African cinema pioneer Djibril Diop Mambéty, born July 23, 1945, in Colobane, just outside Dakar, Senegal. He died young, in 1998, at 53. But his work, his influence, and his voice have never really left us—certainly not me. Next to the likes of other pioneers, particularly the firebrand that was Med Hondo, few filmmakers (African and otherwise) have inspired and influenced the work that I do today.
How do you remember someone whose name still carries that much weight?
For those who’ve seen “Touki Bouki” (1973), “Hyenas” (1992), and everything that came before and after, I may be stating the obvious. But Mambéty’s relevance isn’t just about the films we revisit. It’s about the future those films continue to call into being. It’s about the many people—some of them reading this now—whose careers and commitments in cinema, criticism, curation, or production carry traces of what Mambéty helped set in motion.
He once said: “It is good for the future of cinema that Africa exists.” That quote has appeared across Akoroko newsletters and social media channels more than once, for good reason. It is one of the most honest and enduring things ever said about cinema. Not African cinema, not independent cinema, just cinema.
When Mambéty said it, he wasn’t making a plea. He wasn’t asking a question. He was stating a fact. Africa does not need to justify its cinematic future. It already exists, in fragments and futures, as part of the DNA of the form itself. Mambéty knew this. He saw the image as native to the continent, not in a romantic or metaphorical sense, but in a material, political, artistic one. In interviews, he often spoke of African oral traditions, visual memory, and rhythm, as foundations of cinematic intelligence.
There was always more going on than met the eye. “Touki Bouki,” for instance, was never just a film about restless, lost African youth, or a stylish ode to the French New Wave, as it’s often been referred to. It was about migration, imagination, rupture, and refusal. “Hyenas,” his 1992 adaptation of Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 tragicomic play, “The Visit,” wasn’t just a return two decades after his feature debut; It was a confrontation with the cost of poverty, the pull of foreign money, and the illusion that justice is ever neutral. Both films looked outward without asking for permission. Both films knew exactly where they came from.
And yet Mambéty was not preoccupied with representation. He was far more interested in sound, in interruption, in movement, in what cinema could still become. He made room for disobedience—in form, in rhythm, in tone. He saw no contradiction in being African, experimental, commercial, theatrical, intuitive, and global all at once.
There are many things Mambéty didn’t live to see: the rise of digital filmmaking, the spread of streaming platforms, and the dominance of mobile storytelling consumption across Africa. But he arguably, even if unwittingly, anticipated much of it.
In “Le Franc” (1994) and “La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil” (The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, 1999), the two shorts he completed near the end of his life, he returned to the streets, to quiet struggles, political absurdity, to the poetics of everyday people. He called it “Contes des Petits Gens” (Tales of Little People), an incomplete planned trilogy. But the final film, “La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil,” is perhaps his most hopeful.
That work follows Sili, a young girl in Dakar with a physical disability who uses crutches to walk. She decides to sell newspapers, a job previously done only by boys. The film stays close to her as she moves through the city, asserting herself with quiet strength, persistence, and insisting on dignity in small, everyday moments. That sense of movement, however limited or local, still resonates.
It mirrors the kind of work many of you are doing now, pushing forward and staying committed even when the possible outcomes aren’t immediately clear.
To write about Mambéty now is not just to honor a legacy. It’s to recognize a presence that continues to unsettle, affirm, and inspire. His son, Teemour, continues that work in his own way. But so do many of you: filmmakers pushing form; programmers expanding access; critics writing against flattening; funders backing risk; distributors resisting formula.
Mambéty’s films are not blueprints. They don’t prescribe, and they don’t explain. They invite. They challenge. They laugh. And they remind us that African cinema was never on the periphery. It has always been part of the future.
So, how do you remember someone whose name still carries that much weight? By returning to the work. By taking it seriously. And by continuing your own, refusing to work small.
Before I close, I want to recommend one rare and revealing conversation Mambéty gave: “The Hyena’s Last Laugh.” Conducted in 1998 by scholar Frank Ukadike and published in Transition (Vol. 78, pp. 136–153), this approximately 17-page exchange is probably Mambéty’s longest documented interview, far more substantial than the brief clips floating online.
It’s both intimate and expansive: a filmmaker speaking plainly about artistic choices, the role of marginalized people, and the future of cinema. If I had to point to a single text that captures his worldview, this is it.
For those who want the full conversation, look for “The Hyena’s Last Laugh: A Conversation with Djibril Diop Mambéty.” A quick web search will turn up fragments and excerpts. The full text is behind paywalls, but it remains one of the best sources for understanding his ideas in his own words.
Happy 80th, Mambéty.
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