Born in Dakar in 1943 and dying in Paris in 2023, Safi Faye was a teacher before she became an ethnologist and film-maker, and is regarded as the first woman from sub-Saharan Africa to direct a commercial feature film. Her work blends ethnography and fiction, and is rooted in the Serer village of Fad'jal, her father's home. Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village, 1975), cast with villagers, shows the pressures of cash-crop farming on their lives. She later made Fad'jal (1979), Selbé (1983) and Mossane (1996).
Filmography
- Letter from My Village (1975)
- Mossane (1996)