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. 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 Senega. Sponsored by: French and Francophone Studies.