Burkina Fasso's Filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo died at the age of 64. Director or more than 40 films, he’s contributed to cast a light on Burkinabe cinema.
It’s during the Berlinale, this Sunday 18 February, that we learnt with great sorrow the death of Burkina Fasso’s director Idrissa Ouedraogo, born in 1954 and winner in Berlin in 1993 of a Silver Bear for Samba Traoré. After several short films in the early 80s, everything changed with his 1st feature film YAM DAABO, selected at La Semaine de la Critique in 1987, followed by Yaaba (Directors Fortnight in 1989) and by Tilaï, winner of the Jury’s Grand Prize at the Festival de Cannes in 1990. In the wake of his two celebrated predecessors, Sembene Ousmane for Senegal (BLACK GIRL, Semaine de la Critique 1966) and Souleymane Cissé for Mali, he’s contributed to cast a light on Burkinabe cinema, one of the rarest African country to have had a cinema policy, and for which he acted as a wonderful ambassador all across the world. His films, sensitive and generous, nourished by an aesthetic will, a profound belief in storytelling, a love for his characters, a true sense of space, whether they recall childhood, evoke the dramas of arranged relationships (Tilaï) or the harsh and brutal realities of the rural world, symbolise the happy years of African cinemas. We now wish for his films to be largely seen, so that they carry on living in our memories and pave the way for future generation to follow the path he has laid out.
Charles Tesson