Film Screening and Discussion with Mamadou Dia

Mamadou Dia is an award-winning Senegalese film director, screenwriter, and co-founder of the production company, Joyedidi. Often based on his life growing up in West Africa, Dia’s films explore the tension between fact and fiction, realism and abstraction.

THE FILM we are screening is BAAMUM NAFI (Nafi’s Father)

A NYU Tisch MFA graduate, he debuted in 2016 with his short film Samedi Cinema, which premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. His first feature, Baamum Nafi (2019), which explored the life of an imam and father in Northern Senegal, won the Best First Feature Award at Locarno and was Senegal’s official Oscar entry, screening at over 80 festivals worldwide. His second feature, Demba (2024), premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and examines grief and indigenous mental health practices in Senegal. Both features had theatrical release in Senegal.