Biography

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, Mr. Dia’s films explore the tension between fact and fiction, realism and abstraction. His short film, Samedi Cinema, opened at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals in 2016 and received numerous accolades. Baamum Nafi (Nafi's Father), his first feature film, premiered in 2019, winning two Golden Leopards for “First Feature”, and “Filmmakers of the Present'' at the Locarno International Film Festival. It was selected for MOMA/Lincoln Center’s 2020 New Directors/New Films, the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab, and the 2018 Hubert Bals writing grant. Senegal chose Baamum Nafi as its Oscar entry for Best International Feature in 2021. Mamadou Dia received an MFA in Filmmaking from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2017.

Mamadou Dia’s film “Bamuum Nafi” represented Senegal in the 2021 Oscar race. Produced entirely with Senegalese funding, Dia’s feature film follows in the footsteps of “Félicité” by Alain Gomis and “Atlantique” by Mati Diop.