Dani Kouyaté
The film director and griot from Burkina Faso, who is based in Sweden, made a lot of waves in 1995 when he released his first full-length film, “Keïta! l’Héritage du griot” (Keïta! The Heritage of the Griot). The film, which retraced the legend of Soundjata Keïta, founder of the Mandinka Empire, received the Best First Film Prize from the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) and was awarded the Junior Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Kouyaté had before directed several short films: Bilakoro in 1989, Tobbère kosam (Poussière de lait) in 1991 and Les Larmes sacrées du crocodile in 1993. In 1999, Kouyaté, who has a Master’s degree in Cultural and Social Marketing at the Sorbonne, worked for Burkina Faso Television, directing several episodes of a series, À nous la vie “Let’s grab life”). His second feature film was “Sia, le rêve du python“, released in 2000. In 2005 he directed “OuagaSaga“, an urban comedy before releasing his first Swedish film “While we live” in 2015. With an advanced degree in Cinema from the Université Paris 8, Vincennes à Saint-Denis, Kouyate teaches at Uppsala University at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology and at Uppsala “Wiks Folkhögskola” at the Department of Theater.
